


Sher Trek: The Mirrored Vow

by CaresaToland



Series: Sher Trek Pilot Miniseries [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Agony Booth, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Bonding, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s02e10 Mirror Mirror, M/M, Mind Meld, Mirror Captain John Watson, Mirror Sh'lok, Mirror Universe, Sexy Mirror Uniforms, Some Redshirts get fried, Soul Bond, Treklock, but they weren't very nice Redshirts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-03-28 16:12:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13907640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaresaToland/pseuds/CaresaToland
Summary: Captain John Watson and his landing party are flung into a morally inverted and deadly alternate universe. Their only way home means depending on a dangerously unpredictable version of Sh’lok… and a murderous lieutenant named Morstan.





	1. TEASER

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who're a little bemused at finding Captain John Watson and his First Officer in bed together at the _beginning_ of a fic... before reading this episode, you might like to explore the earlier episodes of "Sher Trek" to find out the details of how they got there. (Especially since some events in this episode will make very little sense without having read the earlier ones.)
> 
> The series starts with [A Study In Darkness](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10683462/chapters/23656500) and continues through [The Denevan Problem](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10748805/chapters/23830950), [Sh'lok's Brain](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10819992/chapters/24006627) and [Amok Sign.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10881297/chapters/24178041)
> 
> Also, you might like to take a look at [the handsome "TV Guide" cover for last year's Miniseries April, by the lovely Reapersun.](https://caresatoland.tumblr.com/post/159943440019/heres-the-debut-tv-guide-cover-for-the)
> 
> For those of you who know the story already: it's great to be writing for you again. Welcome back!

“John.”

_Nnngh._

_“John…”_

_Not just yet oh god oh god just five minutes more._

There was a pause. Even half-awake, he knew what would come after it, for it was the only thing that provoked that particular pause.

_…T’hy’la._

Eyes still closed, face still pressed against the pillow, John Watson had to smile: even though there was the faintest touch of sadness about the smile, even though he knew the other would feel/hear it. Even though that word had become (John suspected) Sh’lok’s favorite one in the whole Vulcan language, he was still slightly uncertain about saying it.

Eyes still closed—because for this they didn’t need to be open—John reached out to touch his Vulcan and draw him closer, while bringing himself awake enough to make sense. _Sh’lok,_ he said silently down the bond between them, _don’t you_ ever _dare think there’ll come a day when you haven’t the right to use that word to me._

Warmth wrapped itself around him, held him close. _Logically speaking,_ Sh’lok’s mind murmured into his—reassured, but chasing after the last word on the subject as usual— _life is change, my John. All things change…_

 _Some of life’s not_ completely _ruled by logic,_ John said. _And this is one bit. I am yours, for the duration. And you are_ mine, _mister. Today, and ever after. So get used to it._

Across from him John felt that small smile starting, and opened his eyes to see it, because it was always worth seeing—the expression that no one else on this ship, no one else in this Galaxy, or any other, got to see. John smiled back at it… because it was impossible not to… and then yawned: he couldn’t help it. “What time’s it?”

“Point three five.”

John made a fake-shocked face. “Oh, _Sh’lok._ Accuracy to only _two_ significant decimal places? What did I _do_ to you last night.”

It wasn’t a question as such. In response, the small smile got larger and turned more wicked. “Nothing I hope you will not do repeatedly in the future,” Sh’lok said. “Especially the part where you put your—”

“Oh no you don’t, do _not_ wake up my sense memory right this minute,” John said. “First shift for both of us today. Dear _God_ whose good idea was this schedule, I’ll have them cashiered.”

“As I recall,” Sh’lok said, sliding his arms up around John’s back and starting to knead at his shoulders, “it was yours.”

John relaxed into the massage for a few seconds, but just a few. “Point three five eight one eight three nine,” Shlok said, as if in afterthought.

“Now you’re just showing off,” John said.

“And you enjoy it.”

“God help me,” said John, “yes I do. You, and your massive brain. And your massive heart.” John’s gaze began to casually drift southward of that organ. “And your massive—”

“Really, John. My modesty—”

“Could not be located by even the entire staff of astronomers running the Greater Ophiuchus Tachyar Array. On _overtime_. So don’t start.”

Sh’lok’s eyes crinkled. John stretched in his arms, but didn’t move otherwise. “I should get up…”

“I am not sure that being so conscientious about your arrival on shift will make much difference to the way your day will go,” Sh’lok said. He sounded a touch somber.

John sighed, because he was probably right. “The Halkans…”

“The solution Starfleet desires us to obtain from them,” Sh’lok said, “will almost certainly not be forthcoming.”

“Calculated the odds, have you?”

Sh’lok produced one of those resigned yet amused down-the-nose sniffs that John had learned to translate as _You are my Captain and my opinion of you is invariably excellent but I can’t imagine why you persist in asking me questions to which you already know the answer_. “Their pacifism is of a depth and commitment that even Vulcans might envy,” Sh’lok said, “were we a people who indulged such distasteful emotions. Our past—with its early acquisition of interstellar travel capability—necessarily equipped our own species with far more pragmatism about violence in self-defense. Such was necessary to survive through discovery by other species in ancient times, and into the present. But the Halkans, only newly discovered by other worlds and species, have had the leisure to maintain their stance so far.”

“I get a sense that you doubt they’ll have much further leisure for it,” John murmured.

Sh’lok shook his head, resting his cheek against John’s shoulder in such a way that he could practically feel his Vulcan’s interior resignation merely through the slight release of tension in his musculature. “This part of space has become much more attractive to the more expansionist species on this side of the Galaxy in recent years, since its stellar weather began to change. While the radiation levels here were severe enough to prevent even accurate long-range scanning and survey, let alone the maintenance of a frequent enough presence to secure even casual trading relationships, no one took any real interest. But now, since the remnant of the old Van Buren supernova’s pressure shell has finally begun to blow through this region and started taking the local emissive nebulae with it…”

“Suddenly the pirates can see their way clear to come through and do a little investigation,” John said. “Or a little investigative plundering. The Klingons, maybe even the Romulans…”

“Mmm.”

“…Well, maybe not if we can get the Halkans to see sense and let the Federation take them under its wing.” John reached up and indulged himself in just a moment’s worth of slipping his fingers through those silky curls that were also only his to see when Sh’lok was off duty and the built-in timer on his esoteric Vulcan custom hair product had counted itself down to zero.

Sh’lok hummed again and buried his face against John’s chest for just that moment more. _I have a feeling they may perceive the Federation’s wings to be those of just one more circling predator,_ Sh’lok said silently. _Still…_

“Still,” John said, and buried his face in the curls for one last second. Then he sat up. “Come on, Sh’lok. I’ll get down there and give them one last chance to size us up. Maybe we’ll have to resign ourselves to giving Starfleet the bad news and leaving them to their own devices. But who knows…”

Sh’lok sat up beside John and gave him a look of slight disappointment. “You will not allow me to accompany you?”

John shook his head, got up and stretched. “You saw how the weather’s been since we got here,” he said. “Ion storms every other hour, plasma flares from Halka’s sun at a moment’s notice… That one CME yesterday could have taken a nacelle off us if the angle had been any less acute, Mrs. Hudson said.”

Sh’lok, getting up on the other side of the bed and fishing around on the floor for yesterday evening’s uniform tunics, cocked a rueful eye at John. “Mrs. Hudson’s tendency toward dramatic overstatement is normally more amusing.”

“Especially when we get tossed around the way we did when we made orbit. Sh’lok, for so long as Hudders needs to be down there with us holding all these bloody dissertations on what we do with dilithium crystals that _doesn’t_ involve powering starships, I’m sure she’ll be a lot happier knowing that you’re up here minding ‘her ship’ in these peculiar conditions.”

“As, I would say, are you,” Sh’lok said, picking up a discarded undertunic and not even needing to look at it before handing it to John to be dealt with or put away. “Since you were the one who mentioned the Klingons and the Romulans…”

John took the undertunic and chucked it into the clean-or-recycle receptacle. “She’s not as combat-seasoned as you are, Sh’lok,” John said. “And bearing in mind some of the places our two minds have been recently, if a Klingon task force disguised as an exploratory expedition pops out of nowhere, it’s _you_ I want in the center seat. These days it’s nearly as good as having us both on the Bridge.”

Sh’lok bent his head down toward John’s, and their gazes rested together for a moment. “John,” Sh’lok said, his voice dropping very soft, very deep, as he smiled a somewhat-Watsonian half-smile, “…nothing is that good _at all.”_

Looking up into those silver eyes, John shivered with desire and delight, and wondered again—for approximately the thousandth time—what in the Universe he’d done in this life to deserve the amazing turn of events that had brought him and this man together, and then closer together still. It had miraculously left them still the best of friends, still with their mutual loyalties as starship Captain and First Officer intact… perhaps even stronger than ever. But the other passion they shared, their love of the work they did and the ship they served, that too remained as it had been: preeminent, with all others subordinate to it. _Which is just as it should be._

And which was the only reason John could now, teasing, glance at the bed and then back at Sh’lok, and smile, and say, _“Nothing?”_

Sh’lok mirrored John’s glance at the bed, then looked back at John, and matched his smile… and waited to see what John would do.

That response too remained as it had been from the start. Where John Watson led, Sh’lok would follow—though there were more than enough times when that order would abruptly reverse itself, leaving John running after his Science Officer on the trail of some tantalising mystery or into some crazy danger and muttering _Dammitall, Sh’lok!_ And while John suspected he knew what Sh’lok would rather be doing at the moment (as his Vulcan was very much still making up for what he considered years of lost time), just now they needed to report for duty on time, or risk setting off an outbreak of tolerant and badly-hidden smirking on the Bridge. So for the moment John just grinned and reached out to squeeze Sh’lok’s upper arm, shaking him a little. “We can discuss what’s ‘that good’ later,” he said. “Meantime, let’s shower and get ourselves sorted, and get to work.”

***

An hour later John was on the surface of Halka V, once more standing in the little dais-centred clearing in which he and his senior officers had been meeting with the Halkan Council for the last couple of days. Halkan tradition mandated that important discussions should take place under the open sky where the Gods could clearly see what was said and done. John privately wondered whether the real reason behind this was so that people could keep an eye on what the Gods were up to in the way of solar weather. Ever since they beamed down an hour or so before, the sky had been dancing with the planet’s idiosyncratic violet dayside auroral display. Sh’lok had gone on at fascinated length about the unique bowshock-accelerated hydrogen/helium interactions in the planet’s upper atmosphere that produced the signature color and the unusually vivid and quick-moving activity—wreaths and currents of purple fire writhing violently against one another right across the sky. Unfortunately the same violence was communicated down into the planet’s ionosphere and stratosphere in the form of ionic turbulence and conventional storm activity that was only sometimes wet but routinely very loud.

On the dais, on an ornately carved and cushioned bench bracketed by a couple of his standing senior advisors, sat Tharn, the leader of the Council. He was an earnest, intense little man in middle age, silver-haired as many of his people were, who wore a simple orange tunic collared and hemmed in gold, and held a gold-knobbed rod of office across his lap. On his forehead, like his attendants, he wore a small round blue mark that was an indicator of his adherence to the planet’s ethical code, which had a long name in Halkan that John had to keep relearning because he kept forgetting it.

What Tharn was _not_ letting him forget was what that code meant. He had spent two days now explaining it to John and Hudders and Lestrade and Donovan, never losing his temper, always speaking in a steady firm tone that made John wonder occasionally whether Tharn had been a teacher at some point. He’d have been good at it, John thought; the kind of teacher who never loses his temper, even with the slow ones. _Like us…_

“We believe what you say, Captain Watson,” Tharn was saying in that same patient tone, “but our position has not altered. The Halkan Council cannot permit your Federation to mine dilithium crystals on our planet.”

John restrained himself from sighing. “Sir, we’ve shown the council historical proof that our missions are peaceful.”

Tharn nodded. “We accept that your Federation is benevolent… at present. But the future is always in question. Our dilithium crystals represent awesome power. Wrongful use of that power, even to the extent of the taking of _one life,_ would violate our history of total peace. To prevent that, we would die, Captain. As a race, if necessary.”

He was not grandstanding, John knew. The man’s steady faith in the rightness of his path showed in his face, his eyes. “I admire your ethics,” John said, “and hope to prove ours.” _Before someone a whole lot less concerned about your ethics than we are comes along and tests that part of your thesis to destruction…_

He was interrupted by another of the alarmingly loud thunderclaps that had begun occurring every few minutes down here as soon as they beamed down. There was something unusually immediate about this one, though, and thinking of his ship, the hair went up on the back of John’s neck—or maybe it was just the heavily positively-ionized atmosphere getting at him again. His skin had been prickling on and off without warning since the first time they’d beamed down here.

John reached for his communicator, flipped it open. “Watson to _Enterprise.”_

“Sh’lok here.”

“Report on magnetic storm, Mr. Sh’lok.”

“Standard ion type, Captain,” Sh’lok said, “but quite violent—” He paused. In the background, John could hear the sound of his ship being shaken around. “—and unpredictable.”

Sh’lok’s voice was to his Captain’s well-trained ear quite eloquent of his opinion of the unpredictability, and at the sound of it John couldn’t help smiling a bit. “Rough ride?”

“If we stay.”

There wasn’t much point in drawing this out any longer… at least not for today. “Stand by to beam up landing party,” John said. “And plot an extended orbit to clear disturbance. Watson out.”

John turned back to Tharn. “When may we resume discussion?”

Tharn rose to face him. “The Council will meditate further, but do not be hopeful of any change.”

John nodded and moved to step down off the dais, his landing party moving with him to arrange themselves for beam-up. As John was stepping down from the dais, Tharn said, “Captain—”

John paused, turned back toward him.

“You do have the might to _force_ the crystals from us, of course.” Tharn met John’s gaze with his own, held it.

This was plainly the kind of leader who wasn’t afraid to take a negotiation into uncomfortable territory, and John found himself admiring Tharn’s forthrightness even more. “But we won’t,” John said, with just a slight smile. “Consider _that.”_

He stepped down off the dais and moved into position with the others, flipping the communicator open again. _“Enterprise?_ Transporter room— Energise.”

The usual humming sparkle began…

And that was when things went wrong.

***

One didn’t normally feel things in transport. But this time John did. There was a sense of an abnormal flickering, of everything being wrenched out of phase so that you were left seeing or feeling somehow at a wrong angle, one you were never meant to experience. It was _anguish_. John would have writhed with it, except that motion was also impossible, as usual when transporting.

The painful experience didn’t last, though that flickering burned behind John’s eyes in seeming afterimage, its colors shifting. And then the hum of transport started making itself heard again as his senses started working correctly once more, and that at least was as it should have been— Except there was something off about the Transporter sound; he picked up on that instantly. And the light, too, the color of the Transporter effect was way too saturated, what was going on with _that?_ Something to do with the ion storm? _Oh please God let us not all be in the middle of a Transporter malfunction…_

Except then the Transporter room came fully clear and real around them, and John sucked in a breath of utmost relief and got down off the pads in a hurry, heading over to the figures standing behind the main control console. “Sh'lok was right, it was a rough trip—” John said.

Then he stopped and stood still right where he was, because Sh’lok wasn’t on the Bridge; he was _here._

Except that it was a Sh’lok in a strange satiny version of his Science tunic, gold-sashed and adorned with insignia and decorations that weren’t like anything John recognised as part of Starfleet usage. A Sh’lok with his hair slicked straight back from that high forehead; a Sh’lok with a mustache and a _goatee,_ for fuck’s sake, practically an attempt at a regulation old-naval “full set”. A Sh’lok drawn up, like the Transporter chief next to him, in a stiff formal cross-armed position that then turned into a right-handed fist-on-shoulder thump and a stretched-out right arm with the hand slanted out and palm-up—a salute that instantly brought up very bad associations from Earth history of centuries past, a terrible time of unspeakable atrocities.

The flicker of matching motion from one side brought John’s head around. There, flanking the door out into the corridor, were two armed security men— _what the hell are_ they _doing here?_ —who were giving the same salute. _No sashes,_ remarked some observing part of his mind, dispassionate as Sh’lok in one of his more analytical modes.

 _Sashes, dear_ God _but what the—_ John looked down at himself in shock, half raising his arms in astonishment at the body-hugging tight-cut glittering golden uniform tunic he was more or less wearing, for his arms were bare and his collar was cut halfway down to his waist and he actually had a goddamned _knife—_  John wanted to blush. It was like someone with an old-fashioned military fetish and a half-hidden hankering for other fetishes too had designed this thing.

 _Not just_ any _Transporter malfunction,_ John thought. _Because one of those might chew you up and spit you out as some horrible mangled lump of protoplasm, but who’s ever heard of one that changed your bloody_ clothes?? And meanwhile moment was succeeding moment and something genuinely awful had happened and he had to pull himself together and _manage_ it. Find out what had happened. Find out how to _fix_ it—

“At norm, Mr. Dimmock,” this Sh’lok was saying. “Controls at neutral.” And there was the worst of it, because the man whom John most desperately wished was here to help him figure all this out was _not_ here. _And Dimmock?_ What the devil was _he_ doing down here handling Transporter duty? _And if he’s here, who’s minding the helm on my Bridge?_ What _the fucking—_

“Yes, sir.” This Dimmock, a cowed-looking Dimmock that John found hard to understand, because he was normally a most assertive and self-assured young officer, hurriedly bent over the controls and started flipping switches as if working very hard to conceal something. The Sh’lok who had been standing next to him now came out from behind the console and took a step toward John, then stood waiting as a subordinate might, awaiting a response. Yet there was nothing subordinate about the gaze that rested on John now. Those silver eyes were practically boring into him as if he was already aware that John was concealing something from him. “Status of mission, Captain?” this Sh’lok said.

John kept his face absolutely still. _Make no sign,_ he thought. _Just hold your nerve and keep still._ Even his own Sh’lok was occasionally at a loss when faced with some human reactions, and could be bluffed if John kept his own tells under control. What Lestrade and Hudders and Donovan behind him might be doing, John didn’t know and didn’t dare look to see. _You need to buy them time, buy all of you time, to work out what’s going on._

So for the moment he just took a few steps forward to face Sh’lok, meeting his eyes just as intensely in a way meant to imply _never mind them, keep your eyes fixed on me,_ and paused there. “No change,” John said, it seeming a neutral enough response and one designed to defuse questions rather than provoke them.

“Standard procedure, Captain?”

 _Standard, what the fuck about this is standard!_ John thought, glancing down at the sheathed knife affixed to this Sh’lok’s golden sash-belt. He could just imagine what his own Sh’lok would say about such a thing. _Barbaric in essence yet also institutionalised, look at the standardisation of design, it matches the one at your own belt—_

John’s gaze slid back up to the Vulcan face, far stiller than his own Sh’lok’s for the moment. Sh'lok was plainly waiting for him to respond. John took a breath and simply nodded.

Sh’lok turned without further comment and went back to the Transporter console, where Dimmock was still resetting controls. There the Vulcan flicked the comms switch. “Mr. Anderson,” he said, “you will programme phaser barrage on Halkan cities.”

“Yes, Mr. Sh’lok.”

 _Anderson?_ What _the—_ John concentrated once more on keeping still as Sh’lok’s attention turned back to him. “Their military capability, Captain?”

However they’d come to this place, wherever or whatever it was, there were plainly many strong parallels to the world where John and his people belonged… and though in absence of data any statement could be a gamble, on this one John thought he was likely to be right. He shook his head, thinking almost with pity now of how little good Tharn’s quiet power was likely to do this version of his people. “None,” John said.

“Regrettable that this society has chosen suicide,” Sh’lok said, casually and without any overt acknowledgement of regret except as an abstract. When no further comment seemed forthcoming from John, Sh’lok glanced sideways to Dimmock. “Mr. Dimmock, you were instructed to compensate during the ion storm.”

“But I tried, Mr. Sh’lok, I—”

“Carelessness with the equipment cannot be tolerated,” Sh’lok said, turning more fully toward him.

Looking stricken and terrified, Dimmock started backing away from behind the console. “But Mr. Sh'lok, I—”

Sh’lok held out his hand as he continued to close in on Dimmock. “Your agoniser.”

“No, Mr. Sh’lok!”

Dimmock kept backing away, but it did him no good. One of the two security officers who were flanking the door came silently up behind him and gripped him by the back of the neck, holding him in place as Sh’lok approached.

“Your agoniser, please.”

Dimmock was too frozen with fear to move. The security officer reached to Dimmock’s belt and unlatched a little oblong device with some kind of red power-and-control solid on the front of it, handing this to Sh’lok.

 _“No,_ Mr. Sh'lok! I tried. I really tried—”

Dispassionately, mercilessly, Sh’lok pressed the thing to Dimmock’s uniform between his shoulder and his heart.

The air filled with a savage sizzling noise and Dimmock reeled backwards, his features contorting into an awful grimace as he went rigid with pain. Sh’lok followed him until he had Dimmock pinned against the wall, twitching and moaning against it. Just when John thought he couldn’t bear it any more, when he thought despite all his best intentions he was going to shout at Sh’lok to stop it, Sh’lok pulled back and deactivated the device.

Dimmock sagged and slid down the wall and collapsed to the floor, gasping in agony. And all John could do for the moment—a moment that felt like eternity—was stand there and think:

 _Dear God in Heaven, how the hell are we going to get out of_ this?

(roll titles)


	2. ACT ONE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not for the first time, Sally Donovan contemplates killing Anderson. Dr. Lestrade bitches about his Sickbay being all messed up. Mrs. Hudson gets cranky about weapons detail. Captain John Watson discovers that he's been ordered to commit genocide. And the man who (in another universe) is his best friend and lover, in _this_ one doesn't understand why John's not obeying orders. 
> 
> In short: _nobody_ is having a good day.

_Captain's log, stardate unknown. During an ion storm, my landing party has beamed back to the Enterprise and found it and the personnel aboard changed. The ship is subtly altered physically. Behaviour and discipline have become brutal, savage. I have no idea how we got here or what to do about it—yet._

_And as for the people… oh God. They may look familiar. But looks can be so deceptive. Who_ are _they?…_

_***_

Sh’lok casually let Dimmock’s agoniser drop from his hand and turned toward the landing party, who were gazing at him with faces frozen in blank expressions that were fortunately not too indicative of horror. _Maybe it’s for the best,_ John thought. _They’re all in too much shock to let much show. We need to get off somewhere by ourselves long enough to gather our wits—_

But Sh’lok was already striding away from the slumped, half-conscious Dimmock as the security men helped him up, and in the landing party’s direction. There was something very harsh and abrupt about the way he moved, as opposed to John’s own Sh’lok’s easy grace. If a body could speak for the mind inside it—and John knew it could—then he had reason to be troubled by what he was seeing. The dry, hidden humour of his Sh’lok, the compassion that tempered his reactions to everything though he tried to hide it away—here they were truly missing, or seemed to be. _But if he has my Sh’lok’s brilliance, his ability to deduce… then we_ really _have a problem._

“Mrs. Hudson,” Sh’lok said as he came to a stand in front of them, “the storm has caused some minor damage in your section. There are also injuries requiring your attention, Doctor.” When they didn’t immediately move, he looked at them sharply. “Well, gentlemen?”

“Mr. Sh’lok—” Dimmock said from behind the Transporter console, sounding most unwilling to attract his attention, but not willing to take the chance of misstepping again.

“Yes?”

“The power beam jumped for a moment, sir, as the landing party was about to materialise. I never saw it happen before.”

Instantly Sh’lok whirled away from the landing party and back toward the console and Dimmock. “Due to your error, Mr. Dimmock?”

“No, Mr. Sh’lok! Before.”

Sh’lok rested that merciless I-will-drill-straight-through-you gaze on Dimmock for a moment, but after a moment seemed to be satisfied, or at least distracted. “Possibly a result of the severe storm.” He turned to John. “Captain, do you feel any abnormal effects?”

 _Fuck yes!_ most of his brain shouted at him, and John realized after a fraction of a second that that was exactly the way to play it. “Yes,” he said, and turned his head to look at the others. “Dr. Lestrade, you’d better look us over. That was a rough beam-up.”

“Yes sir,” Lestrade said, sounding completely dry, and John saw to his relief that the shock in his eyes had faded back a little. And the horror that had started creeping onto Donovan’s and Mrs. Hudson’s faces was being restrained. Their expressions were visibly stilled now, and purposefully so: masks, hastily applied.

John headed to the door, the others accompanying him. Just in the doorway, he turned. “Mr. Sh’lok,” he said, “have those Transporter circuits checked. I want a complete analysis.” _Because if we’re ever going to get back where we belong, we need detailed data to figure out what the hell's happened!_ And he led the landing party out into the corridor, heading for Sickbay.

The corridor just reinforced the sense of being trapped in a very bad dream. As they came out the door and it closed behind them, a crewman in Security red paused and threw that same salute at John and the rest of them. John stopped still, once more in shock at it, the thoughts of imperial Rome and would-be-again-imperial-Germany jostling painfully together in his head. By the time he thought I should really return that salute now—regardless of how distasteful he thought it—the Security man had already dropped it and moved on down the corridor.

The other three turned to him. Mrs. Hudson urgently whispered, “What _is_ all this?!” Donovan said, “How did we get in _these—”_

John held up a warning hand, his brain roiling with thoughts of how both old Rome and the newer Reich had been full of spies and informers. An extension of that surveillance tradition, in public areas at least, was nearly a certainty. _“No,”_ he said under his breath. “Wait.”

They made their way along corridors that were mercifully laid out exactly as their own at home. At every corner, it seemed, guards were stationed who saluted John and watched for a response. He answered the distasteful salute and started falling into the rhythm of salute-and-response with the thought every time, _This is a survival mechanism. Look like you belong here. Don’t misstep or you and the three people who're depending on you might never get home._

Outside Sickbay they were saluted again, and John returned it and went quickly in while hoping he didn’t look as rattled as he felt. There was no relief, though, as the door closed behind them. Sickbay was just as the Transporter room had been: familiar but subtly wrong.

Mrs Hudson stared around the room in disquiet, taking it all in. Lestrade scowled around him as he went over to one of his work tables, picked up a flask, stared at it. “What _is_ this? Everything's all messed up and changed around, out of place.”

“Captain, what’s _happened?”_ Donovan said.

“Wait,” Lestrade said, pointing at the table. “Not everything’s different. That spot— I spilled acid there a year ago.” He shook his head. “John, what in blazes is this?”

“I don’t know,” John said softly. “It's our _Enterprise_ but it _isn't._ Maybe—” He turned away from the work table, pacing.

“Maybe what, Captain?” said Donovan.

He glanced around at them. “Any of you feel dizzy when we were in the Transporter beam?”

Donovan blinked. “Yes.”

“Yes indeed,” Mrs. Hudson said.

“When we first materialised—” John said.

“I did,” Mrs. Hudson said.

The others were nodding. “It happened twice,” John said. “First we were in our own Transporter chamber. Then we faded… and then when we finally materialised, we were here.” He looked around him. “Wherever this is.”

“Captain,” Mrs. Hudson said, coming over to stand by him. “The Transporter chief mentioned a surge of power. The Transporter lock might have been affected by the ion storm… and we just materialised somewhere else!”

“Yes,” John said. “Here. Not our universe, not our ship. Something…” He groped for the right word, found it. _“Parallel._ A parallel universe co-existing with ours, on another dimensional plane. Everything's duplicated, almost. Another _Enterprise_. Sh'lok with a beard…”

Donovan looked suddenly stricken. “Another Captain Kirk, another Doctor McCoy, another—”

He could see it in her eyes, the same question: _Who_ are _these people? Who are_ we _here?_ But there wasn’t enough data to resolve those issues yet: they’d have to wait.

“An exchange,” Lestrade said. “If _we’re_ here—”

John nodded. “Then our counterparts must have been transporting up at the exact same time. Similar storms on both universes disrupted the data transfer, entangled the quantum jump state equivalencies during transport—”

He glanced toward Mrs. Hudson for confirmation. She was already nodding. But Lestrade was shaking his head. “John, what are the _odds—?”_

“Higher than we might think, I’m told,” John said, his mind flashing instantly to a night some months back, late at night across the chess boards from Sh’lok, when the discussion had wandered into recent advances in alternate-universe “sheaf theory.” Shortly he’d found himself floundering at the deep end of a conversation (or an affectionate lecture, as “conversation” implies an exchange during which both parties are equipped to hold their own) containing phrases like “Heisenbergian hyperstring resonations” and “dynamic adjacency” and “blind brane convergence,” and _still_ being beaten to a pulp on the chessboard. As a result John had sighed, resigned Black’s game, and asked the Officer’s Mess steward to bring him a whiskey and a padd for notes, because you never knew when some of this stuff might come in handy.

“Mr. Sh’lok…” Hudders said with a small smile.

John nodded. “If I understood him right, while apparently all branchings of all universes are infinitely possible, they’re not _homogenously_ infinitely possible. Seems that probabilities tend to clump. And the closer some possibilities are, the closer their timelines run. Something to do with resonances between their basic structures on the hyperstring level.”

Mrs Hudson nodded. “But when two adjacent universes affect one another in an abnormal way,” she said, “the resonance degrades fairly quickly as a result. They fall apart from one another, become inaccessible.”

John nodded. “So. We're here, and they're— on our _Enterprise_.” For a moment he was staggered as the question struck him as shockingly as a blow across the face: _What is a John Watson from this universe going to do to_ my ship?!  And hastily John pushed the thought aside, because right now he didn’t have the leisure to stand around considering the possible horrors. He had to _stop_ it, stop it from happening. He took a breath. “—Probably asking the same questions. Are we in another universe? And if so, how do we get back to our own? They'll use the computer to work out the details. We’ve got to do that too.”

“But, John,” Lestrade said, “what about the Halkans? We can't let them be destroyed!”

John thought for a second, then glanced up at Mrs. Hudson. “Hudders, can you buy me some time? Get below and short out the main phaser couplings. They'll think the storm blew the stand-by circuits.”

“Aye, sir,” she said.

“Then get on this technology,” John said. “Likenesses to ours, differences from it. It's all we've got to work with if we want to get back home.” As Mrs. Hudson headed for the door, John said, “I’m betting that the intercom’s monitored. Use your communicators for private messages. Subfrequency and scramble.”

“Yes, Captain,” Hudders said, and headed out the door.

“Lieutenant,” John said, turning to Donovan.

“Yes, sir?”

“Get to your post. Run today's communications from Starfleet Command. I want to know my exact orders. And options, if any.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned away. “Bones—”

Then John realised Donovan had paused just this side of the doorway and was looking at him in some distress, as if reluctant to speak.

“Lieutenant?”

“Captain, I—”

Instantly John knew the thought going through her head: that when she went up to this Bridge, she'd find Anderson there.

While this was one of the less-than-perfectly defined aspects of his duties as Captain, John knew most of the ship’s gossip, especially as it involved his officers. Anderson had had a wife on Earth, in the British Midlands somewhere; there had been a divorce, and it had been messy. While that relationship was coming undone, he and Donovan had become an item. And then the itemhood had come undone as well—mostly from Anderson’s side, said the scuttlebutt; guilt, anger, an inability to accept his own responsibilities in the matter as a whole.

The whole business had got quite ugly. When the chatter about the continually-increasing acrimony had started to reach uncomfortable levels—meaning levels at which both officers’ effectiveness were starting to be impaired—Lestrade had sent Anderson and Donovan off separately for counseling. Donovan, who for all her spikiness was far more emotionally intelligent and better organised than her fellow officer, had needed far less of this than Anderson… whose somewhat frustrated counselor, Lieutenant Algar, started calling him “Angerson” when reporting off to Lestrade. Algar had warned the Doctor that it might take some while for Anderson to settle down, and recommended that he and Donovan should spend as little time together as possible in duty situations. John, having had to sign off on this duty-rostering amendment for the computer routine that managed crew assignments, had simply let out an annoyed breath and hoped Anderson got his shit together before forcing a situation in which he would have to be transferred.

 _And if he’s that difficult a case in our universe… what’s he like_ here? So her concern was completely justified.

But they were up against it, at the moment, and there was no alternative. “Lieutenant,” John said. “I know. But you’re the only one who can do this. And I know you will.”

He met and held her gaze, intent on having Donovan understand that her Captain had complete confidence in her. It took a second or two, but John saw her eyes harden down a bit as the realisation settled in.

She nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said, and turned and headed straight out the door.

John breathed out and turned to the computer screen sitting on the desk. “Bones,” he said to Lestrade, “let’s start taking a look at the library. We’ve got a lot to learn and not a lot of time to learn it.”

***

From the times she’d spent being a newly-assigned or very junior officer on other ships, Lieutenant Donovan knew the simplest ways to make sure you were respected right off the bat. First, walk into every space as if you owned it. Then hold that attitude until someone tried to challenge you for it. And when that happened, see them off in whatever way seemed to likely to be the most memorable for everyone involved.

The approach had never failed her yet… but here and now she was twitching. It would have helped a little if she’d been in her own proper uniform, not this exposed-midriff travesty plainly intended to make of her a _thing_ to be stared at for others’ entertainment. _But that’s not the way things are with_ me _, and they’ll find_ that _out right quick._ In the turbolift on the way up to the Bridge, Sally allowed herself only one concession to her unease about the situation: she slipped that little hip-worn knife out of its sheath and tested the edge.

It was sharp… _very_ sharp. And the marks and tiny notches on the blade suggested that it had seen frequent use, and had been ground down a number of times. She looked it in disquiet, turning it over and over in her hands _Who am I here that I need this to_ be _this way?_ she thought.

It didn’t matter. She had a job to do to help them all get out of here, back to home and sanity, and she'd just get on with doing it.

The turbolift was slowing for the Bridge, and she drew herself up tall and proud as a queen, waiting for the doors to open so she could walk in there as calmly as if walking into her own throne room. As usual a little sound leaked into the lift before the doors opened. “Mr. Bradstreet? Phaser settings for planetary target A.”

“Co-ordinates seven one two stroke four, Mister Anderson.”

“Port batteries locked—”

The doors opened. Lieutenant Donovan walked out of the lift, past the two Security officers flanking the door, and paused there, glancing coolly around the space. Some officers she knew, some she didn’t, but none of them were paying her any particular attention…

Except for one. And as she set eyes on him, as he turned to take her in, Donovan couldn’t help the flicker of surprise at seeing two things: his buzz cut—quite bizarre when you were used to seeing Anderson with a fair amount of hair that routinely flopped around past his ability to control it—and the scar. It slashed the right side of his face from above the brow to just below his cheekbone, a great ridged unsightly thing. _But why hasn’t he had it fixed…?_

In the next second, and without knowing how she knew, Donovan instantly understood how Anderson had got that scar, who’d given it to him, and why he’d not had it repaired.

The realisation taught her immediately what she needed to do. She let her eyes rest on Anderson for just the half-second necessary to let him know that he had _absolutely_ nothing she wanted—which in this universe or any other was the truth—and then turned to make her way to her post.

Refinding her composure after that first glance took her a second or three, during which Donovan busied herself waking the comms board up and telling it to read her out the data the Captain needed. Meanwhile she worked to make sense of what she’d just seen. Beyond occasional brief spasms of pleasure, amusement or (very rarely) passion, Anderson had two basic expressions. One was a sort of confused resignation at the curves his work and personal life seemed to conspire to keep throwing at him. Indeed he seemed to consider a lot of life as some kind of conspiracy specifically constructed to annoy him. The other was the bland disdainful malice he allowed himself to display when in the company of people whose approval of him didn’t matter, and who he’d discovered he didn’t care for. Back on their own _Enterprise_ , when she’d realised that she was seeing more of that look than of any of his more affable or less objectionable ones, Sally had quickly understood that it was time to stop things between the two of them before they got any worse.

In _this_ Anderson, though (she thought as behind her she heard him getting up), that malicious look had abandoned any blandness it might ever have owned. _This_ man, if he thought anyone was conspiring against him, wouldn’t waste time in pouty resignation; he’d move to get rid of them. _And here he comes—_

The next thing she knew, he was leaning against the edge of her board, practically _sitting_ on it, the insufferable arrogant prat, _leering_ at her; putting himself into her face in the manner of someone who imagines he’s not to be ignored. And, dear heavens, there he was in a single smug package—the man she had started to love, just a little, and had come to her senses and stepped away from before it had turned entirely to hate.

She could have said about a hundred things to him, but restrained herself. The whole point was keep things moving in some way that these people around her would mistake for normal. So Donovan simply did what seemed best. She paid no mind to him, and kept her attention on her board and instruments, until Anderson made that impossible. _Make_ him _make the mistake, so that when you act, it’s his fault—_

Finally she had no choice but to notice him. Donovan pulled out her earpiece—which had already told her everything she needed to hear—and levelled a cool flat no-expression expression at him that was meant to say, _Was there something you wanted? If not, go away or I’ll make you wish you had._

When Anderson then reached out to her for all the world as if she was something he owned, or thought he did, and took her by the chin, Donovan declined to act, at least just yet, and simply stared at him.

“Still no interest, Sally?” he said. “Hmm? …I could change your mind.”

She had no trouble keeping her face as still as stone, for any necessary change of mind regarding Anderson she’d taken care of herself, a universe away. Very low and cold she said, “You are away from your post, mister.”

He didn’t let go of her… just laughed under his breath, and smiled an oily superior little smile at her. “Is the Captain here?” he said softly. “Is Sh’lok? When the cat’s away…”

The fury that flared up as his fingers tightened on her chin surprised her. Immediately Donovan slapped Anderson’s gripping hand off her face. And when Anderson staggered back, his shock and anger showing, and then leaned in again to reassert himself, she was just about to backhand him across the face when she heard the hiss of the turbolift doors.

All around her, the Bridge crew’s attention was jerked away by that sound from the little drama unfolding at the Comms station.  Everybody looked up, and all eyes went just a little scared, and every crewman and officer on the Bridge leapt up to salute the man who’d just come in.

 _Thank God,_ Donovan thought, because she wasn’t sure what might have happened had she been forced to follow through... if necessary, with that knife. _Especially when it would have felt_ so good…

Now, though, she had other business. _Give this man what he needs to pull one of his damn rabbits out of the hat and get us all out of here…_

***

John stood there returning the salutes of the crew who’d leapt to their feet at his entrance, holding his salute, making _them_ hold it, while he swept the Bridge with his gaze and made sure of the looks in their eyes. _Terrified. Mostly. Except… not quite all._ Here was Anderson, doing exactly _what_ so close to Donovan’s station? _Wasting not a second to score points of some kind, apparently…_ because the room was simmering with a sense of something having been about to happen. And there was something wrong about Bradstreet’s look too. He was looking toward John’s face but not quite _at_ him, not really.

 _Let it go now,_ John thought. _No point in making them too antsy._ He dropped the salute, and everyone else dropped theirs. Then anyone away from their station moved to resume it. All very casual… but John’s eyes followed Anderson a bit grimly as he made his way back to the helm.

Anderson actually squirmed just a bit as he put himself back in his seat, his expression a flat mask overlaid on something like a sulk. John noted that for later analysis and went to stand by the Comms station. “Communications status—”

“No storm damage, sir,” Donovan said, calmly handing him a padd displaying the text version of the messages she’d just pulled down. “All stations report normal.” And in a very casual, almost matter-of-fact murmur pitched just for him to hear, she added, “You're ordered to annihilate the Halkans unless they comply. No alternative.”

John saw the distress in her eyes—veiled, but there for someone who knew her well enough to read it. He nodded, acknowledging it, scanned down the text on the padd—which confirmed what she'd said, in much more ugly detail—and handed the padd back to her. Then he made his down to the centre seat, sparing it just enough of a glance to note the higher-backed seat, the padding. Someone had decided that this seat, from which millions of deaths could apparently be ordered and carried out the touch of a button, should be _comfortable_.

That in its way told John more about this world than much else he’d seen so far. He sat down in the damn chair regardless, intent on keeping his face from showing anything of what was going on in his mind.

“Phasers locked on target A, Captain,” Anderson said. John’s eyes went to the main screen on which Halka rotated serenely below them, the violet fire of the its auroral activity writhing in its atmosphere’s upper layers. “Approaching optimum range.”

John watched the planet turn and held himself very still. _Here we are,_ he thought. _And not a word from Hudders._ Now _what do I do?_

“Commence fire, Captain?”

John swallowed, hoping it didn’t look like the great gulp of anguish and terror it felt like.

Anderson turned to look at him, confused by the delay. “…Captain?”

“Stand by, Mr. Anderson,” John said, a bit sharply, as if annoyed by his helmsman’s presumption.

 _For fuck’s sake, Hudders, come_ on…!

***

Martha Hudson stalked scowling up to the doors of the main phaser power control suite, which should not have had signs saying AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY and NO ADMITTANCE plastered all over the walls flanking it, and which should emphatically _not_ be bedizened with a logo of Earth with a great ruddy _sword_ stuck through it. _Ugly thing that it is,_ she thought, _and anyway it’s not even a particularly_ good _sword, the shape alone tells you it’d be badly balanced, and look at the silly crossguard on the thing, it’d_ do _you if you actually tried to use the nasty object on somebody—_

As she got close enough the doors slid open before her, which was fine. But what was _not_ fine was the armed security guard standing just inside them, and looking at her with undisguised suspicion.

The annoyance that instantly flared in her, she didn’t bother disguising. “I’ve been ordered to check the phaser couplings for possible damage from the storm,” Mrs. Hudson said.

“Do you have authorisation from security, ma’am?”

“Captain’s orders,” Mrs. Hudson said in a tone that suggested any further interference would not be welcome, or healthy for the person responsible.

Unfortunately the Security guard didn’t seem inclined to take the suggestion. “I’ll have to check with Security Chief Anderson, ma’am.”

Mrs. Hudson rolled her eyes. “Never mind,” she said, “I’ll attend to it.”

She turned away and the door shut behind her. _Damn it all,_ she thought. _Damn,_ damn… But there was no time to try anything more clandestine at the moment: not without discussing it with the Captain.

Regretfully Mrs. Hudson moved to the nearest communicator and punched the button, wondering what Watson would do. “Bridge—”

***

In the centre seat, John punched the comms button, already knowing in his bones what the answer would be, for after a long association Hudders’ tone of voice could tell him a great deal even with one word. “Watson here.”

“Phaser report, sir,” Mrs. Hudson said. “No damage.”

John nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. Watson out.”

Behind him the doors to the turbolift opened, and John’s mouth went a bit dry. He somehow knew without even looking that here came the one element missing from an _Enterprise_ Bridge that also contained him… and the one likely to cause him, and his stranded people, the most trouble.

Sh’lok came stalking in to stand in front of the centre seat and to its left— _God, even_ that’s _wrong,_ John thought—and took everything in at a glance: Halka rotating past beneath them, the planet surface _not_ disrupted by phaser barrage, Anderson looking a bit confused.

Sh’lok turned immediately to regard John. “Planet's rotation is carrying primary target beyond arc of phaser lock,” he said.

Anderson glanced up. “Shall I correct orbit to new firing position?”

John took a breath. “No,” he said.

Sh’lok threw a look at him that on John’s own Sh’lok would have indicated grave concern. But John picked up a peculiar nuance in his look—one not of any kind of warning, but rather of perplexed observation.

When Sh’lok turned away again, the expression had sealed down again to something much more neutral. “Lock on to secondary city,” he said.

“Aye, sir,” said Anderson, and began tweaking controls on the helm console.

 _Stall,_ John thought. _If it’s all you’ve got to work with, stall. Every second you stall is a second during which that planet’s people aren’t dying._ “Lieutenant Donovan,” he said, “contact the Halkan council. I wish to speak to them again.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sh’lok moved to stand closer to the centre seat, looking at John with that same expression of faint bemusement. “Captain?”

“This is a new race,” John said. “They offer other things of value besides dilithium crystals.”

“But we cannot expect their co-operation,” Sh’lok said. “They’ve refused the Empire. Command procedure dictates that we provide the customary example.”

“Secondary target now moving beyond our phaser lock,” Anderson said.

His eagerness to start killing millions of people was starting to get on John’s nerves. “Put phasers on standby, Mr. Anderson.”

Sh’lok’s reaction to this was one that worried John more than the previous perplexity; Sh’lok was starting to look _interested_. “A serious breach of orders, Captain,” he said.

 _Oh God have I overplayed this?_ John thought… because an interested Sh’lok was one of the less predictable and more dangerous forces in the universe. _But what the hell else can I do?! …Except stall. Creatively. And meanwhile play the hard-edged martinet,_ that _seems pretty effective around here—_

“I have my reasons,” John said. “And I'll make them clear to you... _in my own good time.”_ And he gave Sh'lok a thoughtful side-eye. _  
_

Sh’lok’s eyebrow didn’t _quite_ go up. John got the bizarre feeling that Sh’lok was, for some odd reason of his own, restraining himself from reactions he might more routinely consider normal. _And why? If he’s suspecting something,_ what’s _he suspecting…?_

“Captain,” Donovan said, “I have the leader on the Halkan Council waiting on channel B.”

And there was the poor man himself on screen, Tharn, looking drawn and anguished, and still resolute. John’s insides twisted at the sight of him, and the thought of what he was about to put him through. _And to what use? No telling yet, but it’s got to be tried—_

 _“_ It is useless to resist us,” John said, and had to work hard to keep a wince of pain and embarrassment off his face, as this was not dialogue he’d ever in his life imagined having to use on another living being.

“We do not resist you,” Tharn said with that same practiced, weary patience John had heard from him during the days proceeding.

“You have twelve hours to consider your position,” John said, hating this whole situation more intensely by the second.

“Twelve years, Captain Watson,” said Tharn, “or twelve thousand, would make no difference. We are ethically compelled to deny your demand for our dilithium crystals, for you would use their power to destroy.”

 _Sound more like a bastard,_ John thought, _sound more irrational, he has to_ get _it, I can’t save his people’s lives if he won’t help me out here—_ “We will level your planet and take what we want. _That_ is destruction. You will die as a race.”

“To preserve what we _are,”_ Tharn said.

 _Damn it all, stop being so bloody_ principled! ...But that wasn't very likely. “We will not argue!” John said. “Twelve hours. No more.” He snapped the words out and narrowed his eyes in warning, more for his Bridge crew’s attention than Tharn’s. “Close communications. Turn phasers off.”

“Aye, sir,” Anderson said, sounding most dubious, and glancing at John and then hastily away, as if trying to hide a thought.

Sh’lok, on the other hand, was gazing steadily at John, and this time up the eyebrows went; _both_ of them. “Twelve hours, Captain?” he said. “That is unprecedented.”

 _Definitely interested,_ John thought, looking at Sh’lok sidelong. _I’m probably doomed now,_ _but I’m not having the conversation about it here. Just keep playing the game and hope for the best—_

He broke away from that penetrating gaze of Sh’lok’s and got up out of the horribly comfortable centre seat with considerable relief, even though he didn’t have much else to be relieved about. “I’ll be in my quarters,” John said. “Lieutenant Donovan—”

He paused by her station to exchange a look with her. _I have to leave you here. I’m sorry; it can’t be helped._ “Have Doctor Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson meet me there.”

She glanced up at him and her eyes went a bit hard again: that look he’d seen in Sickbay. _I can do this. Count on me._ “Yes, sir.”

Bradstreet got up from the helm console, making for the lift, as Sh’lok moved toward John. “Captain,” he said, “you've placed yourself in a most grave position. This conduct must be reported.”

John paused before the open lift doors, drew himself up, and gave Sh’lok the kind of dry, call-your-bluff look he’d have given him over the chessboard when daring him to do his worst. “You're at liberty to do so, Mr. Sh’lok.” _Because how the hell would I stop you?_

Sh’lok blinked at him. It was bemusement again, and something he’d seen his own Sh’lok do often enough… but almost always in a moment’s vulnerability, a reaction he hardly ever allowed anyone else to see. John turned away from that expression, a touch disturbed, and went into the lift.

Bradstreet was there ahead of him, hand on the lift control. “Deck five, sir?”

John nodded; the doors closed. _Twelve hours,_ he thought. _At least I’ve bought the Halkans that much time. And us. It’s not much. But hopefully it’ll be enough._

But time was not his friend right now, or his people’s. At the back of John's mind was Sh’lok’s voice lecturing him amiably across the chessboard about the mutability of hyperstring adjacence, and Mrs. Hudson saying _But when two adjacent universes affect one another in an abnormal way, the resonance degrades fairly quickly… They fall apart from one another, become inaccessible…_

The lift slowed, stopped. John took a breath and stepped out—

And someone punched him in the face.

Stunned, he reeled back but didn’t fall: didn’t have the chance. John’s arms were seized by two pairs of hands and he was dragged out into the corridor. _Stupid, stupid, you let your guard down,_ here _of all places, now what?!_

The next thing he knew, he was pinned against the corridor wall by two crewmen in the kind of one-piece uniform that Engineering crew sometimes wore, and Bradstreet was standing in front of him wearing an ugly smirk and holding a phaser on him.

“So you die, Captain,” Bradstreet said, “and we all move up in rank. No one will question the assassination of a captain who has disobeyed prime orders of the Empire…”

John glanced around, licked his lips, tasting blood and fear: more for the others than himself. _You can’t fail them, they’re depending on you to get them home, to save them… Find a way!_

And the phaser levelled at his gut and Bradstreet’s finger tightened on the trigger.


	3. ACT TWO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mrs. Hudson pieces together a plan to return the landing party to their own universe. Dr. Lestrade complains that he’s a doctor, not an engineer. John has an unsettling chat with the ship’s computer… and a much more unsettling one with Sh’lok.
> 
> And then John discovers that someone's been sleeping in his bed...

_Captain's personal log, supplemental. I command an Enterprise where officers apparently employ private henchmen among the crew; one where assassination of superiors is a common means of advancing in rank. ...The superior in question, at the moment, being me. Well, I have news for somebody. I have no fucking intention of being relieved of my duty or my life by some arse-backwards version of my own damn helmsman—!_

***

John Watson had been in a fair number of dodgy situations during his career, but this was one he didn’t think it was fair to say he should have imagined or prepared for. _Pinned by the arms against the wall by a couple of privately-managed security men?_ He could have laughed at the unlikely indignity of it if he wasn’t so completely pissed off. There was a third man between Bradstreet and the turbolift door, and then Bradstreet himself. _Three to one. Not impossible. But when one has a phaser—_

John held Bradstreet’s eyes and tried to look flustered. _Not a long reach; I_ was _. But as for now—_ The virtue of the moment was that each of the idiots holding him (and not by the upper arms, but by the forearms, the over confident idiots) was fairly certain that the other had a good enough grip on their target for him to not be hanging on as hard as he should have been. John was watching Bradstreet’s finger tighten on the phaser’s trigger, and it seemed to be happening too slowly because the man was taking it too slowly, gloating to himself about it, enjoying the luscious nastiness of the moment just a little too much. John took a breath and caught Bradstreet’s eyes, blinking, trying to keep him gloating just a moment longer until he was properly balanced and centered and ready to move—

Without warning the man who’s been securing the lift doors suddenly lunged at Bradstreet and chopped down across the elbow of his phaser arm. The phaser clattered to the floor, and the attacking crewman grabbed hold of Bradstreet and threw him headfirst into the corner. His head hit the turbolift-side wall and he slid to lie crumpled there. Perfect! John thought. He flung his right-hand pinioner straight into the corridor wall opposite. Not a second later the crewman who’d attacked Bradstreet had scooped up his phaser and fired, vaporising the man.

John didn’t have time for the shock that went down his spine at that. _Later!_ Because there was still the guy on his left to deal with. That man was hanging onto John’s forearm and upper arm now as if intending to wrestle him into submission by pulling the arm around behind him or some other simplistic move. I don’t think so, John thought, half-turning to elbow the man in the solar plexus. As the henchman’s face twisted and the breath whooshed out of him, John continued the turn, clubbing him two-handed in the chest, and in the final stage of the turn got an arm crooked around the man’s neck. All that was needed now was the half-spin, the crouch and the side-armed throw that sent the man crashing into the far corridor wall. At which point the crewman who’d turned on Bradstreet brought up that phaser again and vaporised the second man as well.

John was readier for it this time, but still starting to simmer with a low fury that for the moment felt far preferable to the recurring gut-fluttering fear he’d been working so hard to master. _That could have been me,_ he thought, _which would’ve been bad enough, but did that idiot or his mate really deserve to be killed? I need to keep this from happening to any of my people, got to get us_ out of here—

As John was swinging around to demand of the henchman what he’d been doing and why, the turbolift door opened. John swung straight back in its direction, intending to confront head-on whatever might come through it instead of being embarrassingly blindsided—

What came out were two more men with drawn phasers and wearing what John was starting to think of as henchman’s uniforms, in blue. One man was a bit shorter than his more senior companion, a balding, closecropped man with narrowed eyes and a lined and calculating face. John was just tensing himself to get ready for whatever and whichever way he was going to have to move now when the henchman behind him held his hands up and said hastily, “Your men, Captain!” To the taller man he said, “Easy, Farrell. I did your job. Ask the Captain.”

“Farrell” looked immediately to John. “Sir?”

“Yes,” John said, “he did your job.”

“Smart boy,” Farrell said. “Switching to the top dog.” He glanced narrow-eyed at Bradstreet, lying crumpled in the corner, and to his subordinate said, “Get him out of here.”

John’s second henchman hauled Bradstreet up, and Farrell braced him as the henchman who’d attacked Bradstreet moved up beside him. “Mr. Bradstreet was going to make me a chief, sir,” he said. “You could make me an officer.”

John stood there thinking for a moment that a man who’d turn his coat once would most likely turn it twice. _I’d like to make you just go the hell away, but God forbid I should say something like that around here,_ he thought. _Someone might take me literally._ “…All right,” John thought. “You’re working for me.”

“A commission?”

John smiled just enough of the kind of smile that at home would instantly have been recognised as a sign that whoever was talking to him would be wise not to push their luck. “You’re in line,” he said, quite dry—because it was looking as if around here, everybody seemed to consider themselves in line. “Who knows, you might make Captain.”

“Yes, sir,” the crewman said, practically licking his lips at the thought.

At which point John had had entirely enough provocation for the moment. He punched the man right in the jaw, and down he went like the proverbial sackful of hammers.

The other two henchmen regarded this as if it was nothing unusual, perhaps even expected. John rubbed reflectively at the spot where he’d been hit himself, half-surprised after all this excitement to find blood still trickling down there from his lip. “Not on _my_ ship,” he muttered.

Behind him, Farrell nodded at the limp Bradstreet, whom he and his junior henchman were propping up between them. “The booth for this one, sir?”

John glanced absently in their direction. “Yes, the booth,” he said. _Whatever_ that _is!_ “Carry on.”

They bundled Bradstreet off. John stood there still wiping at the blood on his face and thinking of the weapons officer whose cheerful expertise he’d so long depended on without question or cavil, whose skill at the helm and seemingly instinctive grasp of starship gunnery had saved Enterprise’s durasteel skin any number of times. _Bradstreet, take command until I’m available again…_ he’d said on Sigma Draconis, without the slightest hesitation, knowing whatever he gave into Bradstreet’s charge would be returned to him safe and in good condition.

The thought of what could take the raw material of such a man and turn it into the cold-hearted, murderous schemer he’d just seen hauled away was making John go cold inside. _This is no place for me,_ he thought, _no place for Hudders or Greg or Sally. I’m going to get us out of here if it’s the last thing I do._

And he headed for his quarters, for the meeting which had been so rudely interrupted.

***

The events outside the turbolift had seemed to take far longer than they actually had. Bones and Mrs. Hudson were just approaching his quarters’ door when John got there. He waved them in and secured the door behind them.

They looked around them as warily as John did, for the interior was once again subtly wrong—all hung with plaques festooned with antique and nasty-looking weapons. Greg, though, got past all that in a hurry in the business of turning his attention to John, and specifically to John’s face. “Here now,” he said, “what’s this?”

John gave him an annoyed look, though the annoyance wasn’t meant for him. “It’s called ‘blood,’” he said. He glanced from him over to Mrs. Hudson. “Watch your step. The officers move up by assassination. Bradstreet tried it on me.”

Hudders blinked. “Bradstreet!” She shook her head. “Bad enough that Anderson’s been made Security Chief of this place, surveilling and controlling everything. Like something out of the ancient Gestapo, one of those spy-on-everybody political officers...”

“You don’t want to see the inside of my sickbay,” Bones said. “It’s a bloody chamber of horrors! My assistants were betting on the pain tolerance of an injured man. How long it would take him to pass out…”

John shook his head. “Report on technology.”

“Mostly variations in instrumentation,” Mrs. Hudson said. “Trivial stuff, nothing I can't handle.”

“Star positions?”

“All the ‘fingerprint’ Cepheids and wayfinder variables are in the right place,” Hudders said, beginning to pace in front of John’s, or at least the Captain’s, desk. “In fact, everything is except _us.”_

John sighed. “Let’s find out where we stand.” He sat down in the desk chair and turned to the library-computer terminal next to the desk, flipped the usual switch. “Computer.”

“Ready,” said a harsh-sounding male voice.

John’s eyebrows went up at that, as everyone knew female voices cut through noise more effectively and commanded better attention from everyone who heard them. He shot a dry look of reaction at the others and said, “This is the Captain. Record security research, to be classified under my voice print or Mrs. Hudson’s.”

“Recording.”

“Produce all data relevant to the recent ion storm,” John said. The usual few moments of whirring and blinking ensued. “Correlate following hypothesis. Could a storm of such magnitude cause a power surge in the transporter circuits creating a momentary interdimensional contact or intersection with a parallel universe?”

_Whirr, chirr._ “Affirmative.”

He made a “so far, so good” expression at Hudders, who put one hand behind her back in a kind of uneasy semi-parade rest and toyed with her knife with the other.

“At such a moment,” John said to the computer, “could persons in each universe, in the act of beaming, transpose with their counterparts in the other universe?”

“Affirmative.”

And now came the real heart of the business, the only question that mattered. “Could conditions necessary to such an event be created artificially using the ship's power?”

John held his breath, but he didn’t have to do it for long. “Affirmative.”

He picked up a datacart from beside the machine and shoved it into the data transfer slot. “Record procedure.” The machine began its whirring and chirring again, then finished. John pulled out the data cart and handed it to Mrs. Hudson. “Hudders, can you do it?”

She shot him a disbelieving look. “Not by myself. Not in these circumstances! I’ll need help. And you'd be too conspicuous.”

John leaned back in the chair, and he and Hudders both looked thoughtfully at Lestrade.

Though he was distracted by other thoughts, the pressure of their gazes quickly got his attention. “What?” He blinked. “I’m a doctor, not a bloody engineer!”

Mrs. Hudson gave him a look that was completely unconvinced. “You’re an engineer now,” she said, and turned away to lean against the desk, musing. “…I’ll have to tap the power we need from the warp engines and balance it for the four of us.”

She wandered off to pace and puzzle at the problem. But Bones’s mind was still plainly elsewhere. He was leaning by the side of the computer, and now he leaned down a little, his eyes lingering, troubled, on John’s mouth, the slight swelling there, the trace of blood. “John… the way this ship is run, what kind of people _are_ we in this universe?”

It was the question that kept coming up, and the one John was half afraid to hear the answer to. “Let’s find out,” he said, and turned to the machine. “Computer.”

“Ready.”

John swallowed. “Read out official record of current command.”

“Working,” the computer said. “Captain John H. Watson succeeded to command ISS _Enterprise_ through assassination of Commodore Michael Stamford. First action, suppression of Gorlan uprising through destruction of rebel home planet. Second action, execution of five thousand colonists on Vega Nine—”

John’s mouth had gone dry. _Mike. Oh, dear God, Mike….!_ “Cancel,” he said, got up out of the chair because he couldn’t just sit there any more. He looked at Bones, bleak. “Now we know.”

“Captain,” Mrs. Hudson said then, getting up from the viewer on the other side of the room, where she’d been examining some schematics. “I can do it.” And she looked exceptionally pleased with herself.

“Good!” John said.

“We’ll have to lay in the automatic transporter setting when we’re doing the power bypass,” Hudders said. “A bit inelegant, but workable. Problem is, when we interrupt the engine circuits to tie the power increase into the transporter, it'll show up on Anderson’s security board. But we'll only need a second or so of that to lock it in.”

John nodded. Sally Donovan, up there on the Bridge and holding the fort all by herself, had been much on his mind. Now here was something she could do that John strongly suspected would help make the suffering seem at least slightly worthwhile. “I’ll tell Donovan we need her to create some kind of diversion to distract Anderson, on your signal. So let’s get back to our posts, at least for a short time. Keep me advised.”

Hudders headed straight out to get on with business. John headed toward the door after her, and paused for a moment when Lestrade said behind him, “John—”

He looked back at Bones. “If we’re here,” Lestrade said, “what do you suppose our counterparts are doing back in _our_ universe?”

That was the other conjecture that had been tormenting him, and making John shy away from it every time, because the possibilities were just too awful. “On our _Enterprise…”_ he said.

On _my_ Enterprise…

***

Lieutenant Commander Sh’lok had seen a fair number of dreadful things in his time in Starfleet—intergalactic pestilence and interstellar war, whole cultures destroyed by cataclysm or slow subversion away from the shining traits that had made them most worthy of survival: torture and rapine, brutal conquest, and every conceivable kind of violence, most particularly murder. Yet until this otherwise undistinguished moment when he stood behind a Transporter console and watched a landing party beam up, it seemed to him that he had never really understood what horror was. Because now he watched the party materialise on the pads, initially relieved to see his Captain there safe and well—

—and realised it was _not his Captain._

The man standing there in the last moments before the beam lapsed and released him back into mobility looked exactly like John Hamish Watson—or would have, to a less acute observer. But Sh’lok had been studying this man with a truly unparalleled intensity since John first reached down to help him up off the floor of his transient accommodations at Starfleet San Francisco. Sh’lok knew how he looked in good moments and bad, in calm and in crisis; in terror, in confidence, in uncertainty, in chilly judgment, in thoughtful cogitation, in painful wrestling with his conscience, in rage and pain and the still moments after.

But this was something else. Even before the materialisation completed Sh’lok could see that there was something wrong with the posture of the man in the Captain’s uniform. And then the Transporter lock completed and the materialisation was done, and the man standing on the pad turned his face partially toward Sh’lok.

Sh’lok instantly perceived that there were lines in his face that did not belong there. They had not been there an hour ago when John left to beam down to the planet… and they _definitely_ had not been there a couple of hours ago, when they were in bed.

_But I have never been in bed with this man,_ Sh’lok thought, going cold to his marrow—because this man’s mind was not John Watson’s. The thin fine line of light and warmth that had seemed to run between him and his _t’hy’la_ since they first became so—if not from the moment they’d met—was missing.

Sh’lok had absolutely no need to hear the man’s next words as he came storming down off the pad, which were: “I want you to blast that whole fucking place to ashes.”

Anderson stared as the man wearing the body that looked so like John Watson’s stopped short at the far side of the Transporter console, staring at the viewscreen that showed Halka rotating serenely below them. For a moment he froze there, and then swung around, staring at the room and plainly failing to find things there that he was expecting.

After a few moments he simply stood still and blinked. Then he was in motion again, swinging on Sh’lok as if expecting some response he definitely wasn’t hearing. “Aren’t you listening to me?” roared the man wearing John Watson’s body, getting right into Sh’lok’s face. “Why isn’t somebody heating up the phasers?”

Sh’lok was at that moment preoccupied with restraining his initial impulse, which was to wait for the perfect moment to employ tal’shiya to kill the being who had the temerity to occupy a body so like John’s with a mind that (even after only seconds’ analysis) was so utterly unlike his. He simply reached out to the console and snapped down a toggle that would start the room’s extension of the library computer recording. “Mr. Anderson,” he said. “I ask you to witness my judgment that the Captain has returned to the _Enterprise_ in a compromised condition.”

Anderson, normally fairly restrained about being asked to make any judgment call whatsoever, was standing there wide-eyed. “Witnessed,” he said.  


Sh’lok hit another toggle. “Security to the Transporter Room,” he said, knowing that a detachment was always nearby and on standby—because in the wake of the dreadful situation at Tantalus V, he and John had discussed this situation and others like it at length, and after some give and take the Captain had set into ship’s protocols a mandated response to it. “Situation 42, I say again, situation 42.” And Sh’lok started a countdown ticker in his head, because after all this sorted itself out the Captain would want an analysis of how well it had worked. This was also helpful in that it distracted him somewhat from the distraught cry at the back of his mind, _John, where are you? What’s happened to you? John!!_

It was just as well that the landing party were not armed, because plainly they expected to be. Sh’lok saw hands go to hips, clutching for—what? Not phasers. Some manner of ceremonial sidearm? Knives? And after a moment or so when the man who looked like John Watson rushed him, screaming, actually screaming in rage “God damn it to hell, what’s the matter with you, do you think I won’t have you in the booth in a second for disobeying me, you disloyal fucking green-blooded animal!”… Sh’lok found no problem at all with reaching out and taking this man by the shoulder and gripping the suprascapular nerve in the way his people knew, and watching the spittle-flecked, rage-twisted face shoved practically into his own go slack and empty as its owner slumped to the floor.

It didn’t last, of course—not nearly long enough. Even in the horror of the moment Sh’lok couldn’t bring himself to pinch that nerve quite as hard as he ought to have… and then the rest of the landing party went after him and Anderson, their version of Lieutenant Donovan being most enthusiastic about trying to pull the poor man’s face off. Sh’lok had had to nerve-pinch her too, and that was when the Security detachment arrived and began the process of carting all the new arrivals off to confinement. Sh’lok was most annoyed that their own version of Lestrade would not be available to conduct a psychiatric analysis, though hearing this version of Lestrade do a variant on “tearing everybody a new one” was amusing enough. He lacked the proper Lestrade’s elegant vocabulary, but what he lacked in diversity or ingenuity of expression he made up for in offensively energetic idiom. Sh’lok made notes for another time.

At last it all came down to a sordid little sequence during which one at a time the newly arrived versions of the landing party were chucked, as John would have put it _(oh John oh John where are you?!)_ “into stir”. The ersatz Captain was last and loudest, struggling with—admit this if absolutely nothing else—genuinely Watsonian stubbornness against the two Security guards haling him writhing and shrieking down the corridor. But (besides the lack of the ineffable bond between them) it was the sheer lack of dignity coupled with the shouting foul-mouthed irrationality that told Sh’lok beyond any possible doubt that no court from one side of the Galaxy to the other would believe for a moment that this man was John Watson.

The sheer _noise_ of him alone was shocking. Crewmen stuck their heads out lab and office and quarters doors to stare, wide-eyed. “I order you,” the man yelled at the poor Security men hauling him along (who, Sh’lok thought, were probably intending to dine out on this event for years), “Let me go! Traitors! Sh’lok! _Get these men off me!”_

With a careful callousness that suggested that (knowing and liking the original John Watson) they’d had about enough of this one, the two Security men waited for Sh’lok to punch the button releasing the brig door’s forcefield, and then flung their unwilling cargo through. Sh’lok instantly punched the control again, at which point all four inside the brig cell started shouting and snarling at him. “What is this?” “What’re you doing, Sh’lok?”

The ersatz Watson pushed himself as near as he dared to the confinement field. “You traitorous pig. I'll hang you up by your Vulcan ears. I'll have you all executed!”

“I think not,” Sh’lok said, as calmly as he could under the circumstances. “Your authority on _this_ ship is extremely limited, Captain. The four of you will remain her in the Brig and in custody until I discover how to return you to wherever it is you belong.”

The “John Watson” snarled at him in uncomprehending rage. “Has the whole galaxy gone crazy?” He yanked at his tunic. “What kind of a uniform is this? Where's your beard? What's going on? _Where's my personal guard?”_

_Beard? Interesting._ “I can answer none of your questions at this time.”

The other-“John”’s face then was transformed rather horribly into an expression that suggested this was some kind of plot against him, a situation he could find a way to control. “All right, Sh'lok. Whatever your game is, I'll play it. You want credits? I'll give them to you. You'll be a rich man.” He actually leered at Sh’lok. “A command of your own? I can swing that, too.”

As if command was anything Sh’lok wanted. His _commander,_ that was something else. But _this_ man? No one would ever mistake him for the one into whose place he’d been thrust. “Apparently,” Sh’lok said, “some kind of transposition has taken place. I find it…” He walked away from the brig door. “Extremely interesting.”

“Sh’lok!” that voice shouted after him, so very familiar and yet wrong in almost every important way. “What is it that will buy you? Power?”

Sh’lok arched an eyebrow in utter astonishment at the situation into which the universe had thrown him. “Fascinating,” he murmured.

“Power, Sh'lok?” The shout followed him down the corridor. _“I can get that for you!”_

Sh’lok’s insides knotted with tension as he headed away to get the hard data on what had happened. _I will not live in a universe that has only this man in it. I must find the one who belongs here, and those with him, and bring them home… no matter the cost._

_…John!!_

***

In another corridor entirely, but very like the one down which one that Sh’lok walked, John Watson made his way, doing his best to look like he belonged there. It was a technique that had served him well in the back streets of port towns and the council rooms of the powerful: convince yourself that you belonged, and let your body communicate the message.

At the juncture of one corridor and the next, this universe’s Sh’lok moved out to join him as if he’d been waiting for him. Behind him, as eyes-behind, came what was apparently one of his own henchmen, a Vulcan. “Captain—“

John paused in the middle of the hall to let him join him. “I am pleased that you frustrated Mr. Bradstreet's plan. I should regret your death.”

This forthrightness nudged at something in John’s mind, something he desperately wanted a taste of in this awful place: the words of someone who actually meant what he said. Yet there was still something John needed to get a grip on. “Why?” he said, starting to stroll down the corridor.

“I do not desire the captaincy,” Sh’lok said, matching John’s pace. “I much prefer my scientific duties and studies. I am frankly content to be a lesser target.”

Except for the targeting, this was something John had heard from his First Officer, or gathered from him, before. What some people who knew no better would construe as a shocking lack of ambition, in Sh’lok’s case simply manifested itself as a certainty that he was already in the place where he felt sure he could do his best service, and he was content with that. “Logical, as always, Mr. Sh'lok.”

John paused for a moment, considering where to go next, when a terrible groan of pain brought his head around. Off to their left, set into what in his own ship would have been another corridor, was a tall floor-to-ceiling booth pulsing with red-golden fire. Inside it, pinned against its back wall and gasping in anguish, was Broadstreet. In the terrible fire inside the booth he writhed and twisted like a bug on a pin.

John forced himself to stay still and quiet while he absorbed one more aspect of the awfulness of this place. _I want to shout and kick somebody and yank him out of there,_ John thought, _but right this minute I don’t dare do anything that will endanger my ability to get my people off this ship and home again—_

“The agony booth is a most effective means of discipline,” Sh’lok said, in a voice that even for a Vulcan was notable for its flatness.

As he moved slowly over to the booth to gaze inside, John noted that tone for later reference. Even when he was being his most nonemotional level of Vulcan, the educated listener could tell whether Sh’lok approved or disapproved of something… and this level of flatness routinely read as disapproval. _Interesting…_

“I presume you've ordered full duration,” Sh’lok said.

Again, very flat… “I haven't decided,” John said.

“Indeed. His act warrants death.”

“I said I haven't decided,” John said as he turned and walked back to Sh’lok,

“That is, of course, your affair,” Sh’lok said, falling in beside John as John started making his way away from there and further along the corridor. John was aware of his “chief henchman” Farrell coming up behind them from the Agony Booth area, and falling in to walk alongside Sh’lok’s man.  
“Captain,” Sh’lok said, “may I inquire if you intend to persist in your unusual course of action regarding the Halkans?”

“You heard my orders,” John said.

“They are, of course, in contradiction to standard Empire procedure. You cannot ignore the consequences.”

At that John had to stop and turn to face the Vulcan. “Is that a threat?”

Sh’lok gave him a look that brought the hair up on the back of John’s neck: the patented _Do Keep Up, John_ expression. “I do not threaten, Captain. I merely state facts. I have found you to be an excellent officer. Our missions together have been both successful and profitable. However, I shall not permit your aberrations to jeopardise my position.”

John turned away and began walking again, rubbing briefly at that sore lip where he’d been punched. After a moment he paused again, turning to the Vulcan. “Sh’lok,” he said. “Do you think we should destroy the Halkans?”

“Terror must be maintained or the Empire is doomed. It is the logic of history.”

John found himself intent on pressing the point. “Conquest is easy,” he said. “Control is not. We may have bitten off more than we can chew.”

Sh’lok began to develop a faint shade of expression that to John looked uneasy. “Captain,” he said, “I do not wish to find myself opposing you. But if you continue on your present course, this confusing, inexplicable behaviour—”

“Is my concern, not yours,” John said. In the spirit of trying to be a little adventurous, he said, “You would find me a formidable enemy.”

“I’m aware of that, Captain,” Sh’lok said. “I trust that you are aware of the reverse.”

He and his bodyguard headed off. John stood there for a moment, unable to keep the slightest smile from creeping onto his face. For there had been something about Sh’lok’s voice that made him think strongly of his own. Something almost— _affectionate?_

Farrell came up beside him them, derailing the thought. “Orders, sir?”

John nodded. “Release Bradstreet. Confine him to quarters.”

Farrell gave him a dubious look, but finally just saluted. “Yes, sir…” And off he went, leaving John standing there, feeling glad at even this brief glimpse of something that reminded him of his Sh’lok… and all too aware that this could be a trap.

***

Outside the door to Engineering stood a Security man with arms crossed, at guard. His head came around as he heard Mrs. Hudson coming toward him—

He never saw the hypo that hit him in the arm from the other side. Down the man slumped, and Hudson and Lestrade caught him between them and manhandled him through the door behind him.

“That’ll hold him for about six hours,” Lestrade said softly as they deposited him inside the door, off to one side and out of sight.

Mrs. Hudson went up the access ladder from that space and up into one of the upper Engineering galleries, glancing down to see if any of the crewmen were taking notice of her and Lestrade’s arrival. None were. She began moving from console to console, starting her work…

***

John made his way back to his quarters, fairly hungry for a few minutes by himself just to think and try to pull himself together for whatever was going to come next. There was a crewman in front of his door, standing guard— _One of my henchmen,_ he thought. _This is all just too strange…_

It was dimmer inside his rooms than it had been when he was in here last with Hudders and Lestrade: someone had turned the lights down. As the door shut behind him and his eyes got used to the dimness, John stopped right where he was…

Because there was a woman lying on his bed.

_What. The. Bloody. Hell,_ John thought.

“I fell asleep,” said the shadowy form. She stretched a little and sat up into the light.

She was a pretty little woman, lithe and well-knit, with soft wavy blond hair and a slightly wicked look about her mouth and eyes— as if jokes, some of them rather acid jokes, were her stock in trade. She was wearing a Science uniform in a dark shade that John hadn’t seen previously— another of those women’s uniforms that bared the midriff, though this one was in a slightly different cut, and came with taller boots.

“We had quite a time in the chem lab picking up after the storm,” she said conversationally. “Though nothing compared to your day, I gather.”  
She swung herself out of the bed and over to the dispenser slot; touched controls on it. The door went up to reveal a couple of drinks in champagne-style glasses. She pulled them out and handed John one. “I heard about Bradstreet…”

“He gambled,” John said. “I won.”

“You got lucky,” the blonde woman said. “I'm surprised you could be caught off-guard that way.”

“I was preoccupied.”

“I’d hope you’re not planning to make a habit of it,” she said. “I’d hate to have to come out of retirement. People would talk.”

“They do little else,” John said, rolling his eyes. He took a sip of the drink and was immediately shocked and delighted by the incomparable flavour, which he would have recognised anywhere. _Dear God,_ he thought, _it’s tranya…_ Immediately his thought went back to the very little man in the very big ship from the First Federation. But now John found himself wondering _what is he in this world? What are they?_ _…But no time for that now._

The blonde woman gave him a slightly narrow-eyed look. “But you’re still in trouble with Starfleet Command,” she said. “And what you've got in mind this time is beyond me. You're scheming, of course.”

He turned away from her, because of course he was, and the less sign he showed of it, the better. “The Halkans have something you want,” she said to his back. “Or is it all some clever means to advance you to the Admiralty?”

And then she paused. “Watson. The _Cabinet itself?”_

_Use the cues you’re given…_ He drank his drink casually. “Further than that, if I'm successful…”

She laughed a delighted little laugh: the sound of someone who’d been surprised by someone who’d done something unexpected. “And without bloodshed for a change?” As he turned toward her, she sashayed over to him and slid her arms up around his neck. “Well, you must know what you're doing. You always do.”

And she pulled him a bit closer. “If I'm to be the woman—” and she paused to kiss him— “of a Caesar… can't you tell your Mary what you're up to?”

The next thing John knew, she was kissing him again, this time with much more intensity and staying power. Fortunately old reflexes kicked in and made sure that he was kissing her back before the memory of more recent kisses, and the relationship that had come with them, ruined the effect. But the longer it went on, the less comfortable John became with the situation, despite the fact that right now the subterfuge was necessary.

The kiss was becoming uncomfortably sweet when the intercom whistled. John let go of Mary and gestured in an apologetic way with the glass. He took it back to his desk, sat down.

“Watson here,” he said.

“Mr. Sh'lok, Captain.”

"Yes?"

“I have received a private communication from Starfleet Command,” this Sh’lok’s voice said. “I am committing a breach of regulations by informing you of its contents.”

Again John had to smile, just a little, remembering other Vulcans’ descriptions of Sh’lok as “regulations-averse”. “Yes, Mr. Sh'lok?” he said.

“I am instructed to wait until planet dawn over principal target to permit you to carry out our mission.”

“And if I don’t?”

“In that event,” Sh’lok said, absolutely dry and uninflected, “I am ordered to kill you… and to proceed against the Halkans as the new captain of the _Enterprise.”_

 


	4. ACT THREE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stranded _Enterprise_ crewmen begin a do-or-die attempt to get back to their own universe. John discovers a strange and ambivalent ally. And the mirror Sh'lok is faced with a dilemma... and a mystery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to apologise profusely to everyone for the health problems that have prevented this chapter and the one(s) to follow from being posted in a timely manner. 
> 
> Act Four will be posted on April 4th, and the (optional) Act 5 on April 6th.
> 
> Thanks also, everybody, for the kudos and kind comments: they're very much appreciated.

_Captain's personal log, stardate unknown. We are trapped in a savage parallel universe from which we must escape within four hours, or I will face a death sentence at Mr. Sh'lok's hands._

_And meanwhile I seem to be having cocktails in my quarters with a hot blonde who kisses like she knows how_ I _kiss. This situation’s becoming more surreal by the moment..._

***

John sat there behind his desk with his legs propped easily up on it for all the world as if he was comfortable with _anything_ that was happening. But it was the only thing he could think of to do. _Brazen it out. You’re in a situation where crewmen disintegrate each other in the corridors and expect their superior officers to_ promote _them for it! …God help me, I’ve fallen into one of those ancient pirate romances Sh’lok keeps telling me about._

 _Except the pirates had_ rules _about killing each other, and they seemed to be a whole lot better at following them than_ this _lot are…_

“Let’s drink a toast to Sh'lok,” said Mary, holding out her glass to John. Happily enough he raised his to clink it to hers, because that was a toast he’d never had trouble making, and these days, more so than usual. “…The only man aboard with the decency to warn you, and he'll die for it.”

And there it was again, that sense of the missed step. Again and again John kept trying to find stability in this situation, and again and again he discovered, on putting his foot down toward the next step, that someone had moved it. “You’ll never find another man like him,” Mary said.

 _You have no idea how true that is,_ John thought. All he could do for the moment was look up into Mary’s eyes, smiling, and say quietly, “I don't intend to kill him.”

The expression she turned on him was amiable enough—she smiled too—but there was a cool edge to it that suggested she was evaluating all kinds of options that might lead to that result, or interfere with it. “Are you going to act against the Halkans before the deadline?”

“No,” John said, “but I'll avoid killing Sh'lok.”

Her glance went very skeptical. “You’re going to just… get him out of the way, him _and_ his men?”

John gave her what was meant to be a friendly version of an expression suggesting she shouldn’t inquire too much more closely. “I'll get out of _his_ way.”

Mary’s look suggested that this might be more difficult than he was making it sound. “Shall I activate the Tantalus field?”

John held his face still while waiting for her to give him some kind of clue as to how he should react to this suggestion, whatever it meant.

Mary’s slightly quizzical frown of reaction was what he needed. “You’ll at least want to monitor him, won’t you…?”

John nodded at her.

Mary got up from where she’d perched herself on the desk and went over to a wall that in John’s office space had a hanging textile copy of a panel of the Bayeux Tapestry, the one in which people pointed in wonder at a comet passing over and the tapestry was captioned ISTI MIRANT STELLA, “They marvel at the star.” Here, though, there was just an polygonal, textured composite panel mounted to the wall.

Mary reached up to it and touched a couple of not particularly obvious spots on the panel’s inner edge. The panel immediately slid up to reveal a small screen and a set of discreet controls, prominently featuring one not-very-discreet button, the fascium around it softly glowing.

“I hate this thing,” Mary murmured, scowling at the installation.

John got up and went to have a closer look at it, standing beside her. “It's not that bad,” he said, hoping she might tell him something more useful about the device.

The quick glance she gave him was extremely ironic. “Of course you’d think that,” Mary said. “Always the pragmatist. It does leave me so much more time to spend on _you,_ for what that’s worth. Instead of running around wasting time on your personal… what was it they used to call it, back in the day? ‘Wet work.’”

She’d already turned her gaze back to the device, and so missed the unnerved expression that John was forced to conceal after it almost slipped out. “But it’s so damned impersonal,” she said. “There’s just no _connection_ , when you use this thing. No payoff. None of the _personal_ touch… the look in their eyes when they realise it’s all over for them, and _you’re_ the reason why.”

She sighed and glanced sideways at John again, and the look in her eyes was a combination of mischief and sheer cold deadliness that made him hold himself absolutely deadpan. But after a moment she turned away once more, shrugged, sipped at her drink. “Doesn’t matter,” Mary said. “Much longer and people might’ve started to _notice_ how I was always nearby when one or another of your enemies expired so messily. To keep your cover you’d have had to either have _me_ targeted, or reassign me elsewhere. And if you’d tried _that…”_

Her eyes narrowed. “Not an optimum solution,” John said, gathering that from Mary’s look alone.

“No. We both know that would’ve ended badly.” She flashed a smile at him that gave John a most comprehensive chill. “But then it didn’t work too well for the last three Captains, did it? That whole useless lot before Stamford. Imperial Intelligence wanted this ship in safer hands. What better way to keep an eye on them than from up very close?” And her smile went amused, reflective. “If they didn’t shape up, best to have someone close by… _very_ close by… who could make absolutely sure they were moved on. Not that tough a job, really. After all, everybody has to sleep.” She looked up at him from under her lashes. “But then… _you_ came along, and it all changed.”

 _This_ kind of look John understood well enough, from long experience. “For the better, I hope,” John murmured.

The warmth in Mary’s eyes seemed genuine enough. “I still remember wondering what the hell it was about you that made me leave _you_ in place after you offed Stamford,” she said. “You were never one of Intelligence’s preferences for the captaincy. But then you started demonstrating… unusual aptitudes.” She smiled, not at the situation, but at _him_. John blushed. “And then the _status quo_ set in and the orders changed. Sit tight and see if things stay stable. Wait to see if Intelligence might get bored with you. Or find another piece they wanted taken off the board.” She shrugged, a kind of _I’m not doing anything else important right now…_ gesture.

“Best to keep one’s options open,” John said, with a slight smile. While thinking, _Dear God in Heaven, there are three hundred-odd_ amateur _assassins running around inside this vessel and the other me shacks himself up with a_ real _one? The man’s not only willingly genocidal, he’s certifiable. I mean, yeah, Starfleet said ‘dangerous’ and here I was, but_ seriously? _And does he really imagine he’s_ controlling _this woman? I have_ news _for him._

“And quite right too,” Mary said, giving John a flirtatious side-eye. “But then came Alster III and that little side job you got yourself into after the species was halfway to being wiped out. The poor alien scientist who begged you to let him and his family escape the ethnic cleansing, in exchange for him handing you his secret experimental lab and all its contents...”

“Love,” John said, hearing an echo of one of Sh’lok’s more cynical opinions and editing it a bit, “can be a powerful motivator…”

“Pity it didn’t make him any smarter,” Mary said. “Hard to imagine he really thought you’d let the lot of them escape alive to tell what had happened.” She shrugged. “But you got what you needed. The secret of _this.”_ She nodded at the panel. “And it makes me laugh sometimes to know that the technology you stole wound up making you the great and powerful Captain Watson. I might have started that work, but _this_ finished it.”

John just tilted his head, smiled half a smile. “Well, if you don't take advantage of your opportunities…”

Mary, amused, smiled back. “You don't rise to the command of a starship… or even higher. Not so quickly. Not without sowing the kind of terror _this_ has done.” She waved her finger over that single button, which bore signs of a fair amount of use. “When I’d kill for you,” Mary said, “people would understand what had happened. Violence. Blood. Even disintegration leaves its traces.”

She regarded the blank screen. “But how many enemies have you simply wiped out of existence by the touch of a button?” Mary said. “Fifty? A hundred? Simply disappearing, with no one near, no hand on the knife or the phaser… _That_ plants the kind of fear in people that’s a weapon in its own right. And now…”

She reached out and switched on the little screen, touched one of the controls next to it to make an adjustment. A second later John found himself looking at this world’s Sh’lok on that screen, sitting at his desk with arms folded, looking thoughtful, even a touch grim.

“That magnificent mind of his,” Mary said. “But it can't protect him from _this.”_

She circled her finger teasingly over the button. “I press it,” she said, “and he dies.” The finger poised above the button, ready to stab at it. “…Now?”

John was starting to get the feeling that this woman was the kind of person who’d kill at a whim if not given a good reason not to. Quickly he reached out and caught her arm by the elbow.

She looked at him with some surprise. John reached past her and clicked off the control she’d initially clicked on.

Mary’s eyes narrowed again, went calculating. “You really mean it,” she murmured.

John simply looked at her. After a moment Mary reached up, touched the hidden hot spots on the shielding panel again: it slid down. She swung away from it, her cocktail glass in one hand, making a little half-resigned moué. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “If Sh'lok fails his order, he'll be killed anyway.”

John moved up beside her again. “I'll see to it that the circumstances of his failure will clear him.”

That calculating look came back into her eyes. “You're not even afraid of Starfleet Command!” she said softly. “Can your scheme bring you that much power so quickly?”

John gave her no answer. She turned more fully toward him. “And what about me? How does Mary Morstan fit in?”

There was something oddly tentative about the question. _Here she is in my quarters,_ John thought, _and it’s obvious enough who she is to this ship’s Captain. Or at least some of what she is. Yet… there’s something that could change. Or is changing._

Part of him—the tactician, the situational strategist—wanted to say _Don’t get clever now, don’t do anything that’ll alter events too radically here, who knows how it might impact our own universe?_ Yet at the same time he was struggling with an odd insistent feeling that kept saying I _f you get too good at acting like this ship’s John Watson, something even worse could happen. Trust your instincts._ That was a strategy that had worked well enough with Sh’lok in the past, both on duty and far more personally—

There she stood, waiting for an answer. So John said to her the kind of thing he might have said to Sh’lok had his Vulcan asked him the same question, early on: casual, playful, but not completely so. “How does Mary Morstan _want_ to fit in?” And because this world’s John Watson and this woman were plainly already intimate, for the moment he followed another instinct, reaching out and gently touching her softly waving hair.

She leaned just a little into the touch and breathed out a small sigh of something that sounded like amusement— then turned away, smiling, and made for the door of the main sleeping area. As the door slipped aside for her she half turned toward John, giving him something of a coquettish look as she sipped the last of her drink. Then Mary vanished inside and the door slid shut behind her.

John recognised quite clearly the signs of someone going to “slip into something more comfortable,” and knew that at best he had only a few minutes to work with. He slipped out his communicator.

“Mrs. Hudson.”

An immediate answer: “Hudson here, sir.” He could hear her working with some panel or other down in Engineering as she spoke, and nearby, the sound of Lestrade cursing softly as he apparently worked at levering a different panel open.

“We have to get out of here within three hours.” John said quietly. “Sh'lok has orders to kill me unless I complete the mission.”

“We’ve another deadline, too, John,” Mrs. Hudson said.

The hair went up on the back of John’s neck. It was rarely a good sign when Hudders “John”ed him in the middle of something critical. “Explain.”

“It’s as I warned you,” Mrs. Hudson said. “The two-way matter transmission has adversely affected the local field density between the universes. It’s increasing, and the equivalency between them’s starting to denature. We've got to move fast.”

John’s gut did an uncomfortable flipflop. “How fast?”

“We’ve got half hour at the most.”

“What if we miss?”

Hudders’ voice was grim. “We couldn't get out of here in a century.”

John swallowed. “Now we’re about ready to bridge power from the engines to the transporter,” Mrs. Hudson said, “but you've got to get down there and free the board so we can lock in.”

“When?”

“Give me ten minutes. I've got to complete a few more computations.”

“All right. I'll be in the transporter room in ten minutes. I'll meet you in Sickbay afterward.”

“Aye sir.”

John closed the communicator and considered his options. The temptation to get out of here _now_ and down to the Transporter room was really, really strong… because so many other things had gone wrong so far today. Yet at the same time he wasn’t sure what alarms it might raise, among those who were familiar with this ship’s John Watson’s movements, if he bolted from his quarters so soon after entering them. Especially when Mary had been snoozing inside them, waiting for John’s return…

 _All the same, you’ve got ten minutes before you’re going to have to go, like it or not. Not a whole lot of not-bolting time left to you…_ And truth to tell, there was one aspect of bolting that suited John entirely… because it was going to mean there was no time for anything serious to happen between him and the woman presently inside “his” bedroom. That room, which on his own ship had admittedly been the location of a nontrivial number of encounters between himself and various enthusiastically assenting crewfolk, had now become a place where he could imagine only one other being in residence.

At the thought of the way things had been in his-version-of-there just that morning, John took a long breath and had to hold still for a moment and concentrate on steadying himself. With all the rushing about from one place to another, the constant assault of dangerous events that had kept commanding his whole attention, this was the first moment in which John had had enough leisure to really take stock of himself…and he found himself, in one particular aspect, very much wanting.

 _Ever since I got here,_ he thought, _something’s been missing._ That impossible-to-describe sense of connectedness, of solid support, of safe harbour: the knowledge that there was someone working with him, _being_ with him, to whom he could absolutely trust not just his body, or his career, or even his life, but his _soul_ … it was gone. And regardless of the fact that all his life before he’d done without it, and that it was so new—its lack was a muted anguish. The space inside John where that connection had come to reside was in _this_ place an emptiness, reaching for the other and not finding him anywhere. As he stood still with (for the moment) just time enough to consider it, that space ached with its own emptiness, clenched like a closed fist around… _nothing_. It was awful, and the desire to get back to where things were right again, where that void was filled, for that moment or so rose up and gripped John and practically _shook_ him, near-unbearable.

Yet he had to push the feeling aside. _Can’t let my trouble blind me to what’s most important here. I’ve got people depending on me, people who’re relying on me to get them safe home out of this godawful place._ He breathed, breathed again, settling himself… or trying

 _Nine minutes,_ said one part of his mind.

And unimpressed, uncaring, _…Sh’lok!_ said another.

***

The First Officer of ISS _Enterprise_ had during his career seen and become used to many behaviours and events that other cultures across the Galaxy would find cruel, terrible, indeed well-nigh insupportable. He had seen interstellar wars declared as an expression of mere personal vendettas, and planets destroyed on a whim (or, as seemed likely about to happen at the moment, for having the temerity not to fall in wholeheartedly with a demand that would have stripped their indigenous species of both planetary resources and defining cultural expression). To such events and manifestations, and many more like them, he had become inured. Little he heard tell of, or perceived with his own eyes, held any power to surprise him any more.

Yet today, in the Transporter room, for the first time in months (eight months, sixteen days, twelve hours, thirty-one point six seven minutes), Sh’lok found himself sunk deep in a most unexpected and uncharacteristic wash of surprise. The prosaic nature of the setting may itself have contributed in some small way to the surprise: just another beam-up, the landing party returning from the surface of Halka V, where they had gone expecting from the natives either a slavish capitulation to the Empire’s demands, or a foolish defiance that would end in their species’ extinction. Sh’lok’s attention was fixed on the pad to the forefront always occupied by Captain Watson in a typically unsubtle reminder to his staff of who was the most important among them. But as the shimmering of the Transporter effect steadied down and revealed the shapes of the beings beaming up, Sh’lok—who had been standing waiting for the normal furious demand that the planet’s civilisation be forthwith destroyed—was startled out of his resigned composure by the realisation that something exceptional had happened. The Transport finished, and the shapes that had been nothing but light and incompletely-resolved energy states a moment before went solid and complete; and Sh’lok immediately perceived that whoever the man standing there in the Imperial captain’s uniform might have been, _he was not John Watson._

Or at least certainly not the one Sh’lok knew. His body language was wrong. His stance was wrong. He held himself quite differently, both standing and moving, as he came down from the pads. Though these were admittedly subjective impressions, they were confirmed in Sh’lok’s experience by months of observation; and there was no avoiding the observation of this moment that the twin auras of arrogance and barely-leashed violence that routinely clung about John Watson were quite missing.

 _This_ man—identical in all other ways, from height and weight and build and hair colour and eye colour, right down to the damage done to the shoulder by a failed assassination attempt in a previous command—held himself in a manner suggestive of nothing so much as a formidable but carefully restrained power. This perception by itself was shocking enough, for the words “restraint” and “John Watson” were ones that could barely be imagined occurring in the same sentence. Equally shocking, though, was the way Sh’lok found this combination drew him—indeed absolutely _fascinated_ him.

And when the man in question stepped off the pad and, instead of shouting demands and imprecations, simply gazed around him in a tightly managed astonishment, Sh’lok’s mind absolutely caught _fire_ with curiosity. Where was his own Captain John Watson, and what had become of him?—yes, _that,_ of course. But more to the point, where had _this_ man come from, and _who was he?_ Sh’lok had to know _more._

Such was his own astonishment that it took him an abnormally long-held salute’s worth of time to master it, and create an interim plan. Sh’lok was not at all used to being so thrown off script by his own responses, especially in front of subordinate crewmen who might (unlikely though it seemed) somehow perceive the momentary weakness and start getting ideas. He therefore fell back on protocol and began reacting to the situation as he would have had the John Watson with whom he was familiar been present there. First he punished Mr. Dimmock in the normally-sanctioned manner for “abuse of equipment” (the momentary irony being that the normal Captain Watson was both too unintelligent to understand what the equipment could take and too lazy to spend the requisite time educating himself). Then he inquired of the Captain—so he had to call this new John Watson at the moment, lacking better data—what his intentions were regarding the Halkans.

The responses to this were most revealing. In general, Sh’lok had become expert at reading humans over time. And more specifically, he had been studying his version of this man most intently for months—not least as the most logical way to increase his chances of surviving him. (For those who crossed Captain Watson, purposefully or inadvertently, had a statistically suspect tendency toward fatal misadventure.) What Sh’lok’s observations were revealing to him was that, with every response, _this_ John Watson was plainly feeling his way.

His answers and his actions, all carefully couched and calculated, immediately made it plain to Sh’lok that he had no desire to destroy the Halkans: that he found the actions required of him (on which Sh’lok was quite happy to prompt him, via his communications with Mr. Anderson on the Bridge) not merely reprehensible but downright inexplicable: and that this John Watson had immediately understood himself and his people to have stumbled into a place where they did not belong—a place he intended to get them out of with all possible speed.

The events of the minutes that followed removed that John Watson temporarily from further observation. The man instantly seized on Sh’lok’s question as to whether he had felt any abnormal effects on beaming up, and used it to take himself and the rest of the landing party off to Sickbay, safely sequestered from public observation. This turn of events added data that Sh’lok very much wanted. The new John Watson showed no slightest alarm-response on being addressed as “Captain”, such as would suggest he found it strange or was concealing some other, lesser (or for that matter, greater) rank. The quick decisiveness and flexibility he exhibited were also reliable indicators. Therefore the man who left the Transporter room in company with the landing party was unquestionably a starship commander, a close parallel to his own Captain John Watson… _from somewhere else._

The chain of deductions that flowed from these few minutes was straightforward, if startling, based on data points which had unexpectedly removed themselves from the realm of the impossible, and were therefore unavoidably true. For one thing, parallel universe theory, so long mooted, was apparently now concretely proven. Sh’lok wondered ever so fleetingly whether he would someday be able to write a paper on the subject—or would survive its publication. That outcome was in any case far down a long dangerous series of causal branchings, since his life was in fact already forfeit for treason. Sh’lok had after all recognised the landing party not to be genuine officers of the Empire, and had failed to immediately denounce them; so should anyone else discover these officers’ imposture, there was a high probability that his death would closely follow theirs.

Naturally it was to his advantage, therefore, that no one else should be allowed to discover the—exchange?—if at all possible, and for as long as possible. But far more compelling, to Sh’lok’s way of thinking, was that he should be allowed to discover as much as he could about this other universe before the visitors to this one managed to escape back to their own. _A universe,_ Sh’lok thought, _where starships apparently do not routinely function as weapons of planetary terror. Where corporal punishment of ship’s crew is not a commonplace._ And most fascinating of all: _Where a John Watson of the kind I have just observed can achieve starship command. And keep it._

His business now was to acquire more data without being seen to be acting in any way that would cast undue suspicion on the landing party, or himself. He must carefully observe their actions both in terms of deducing what they would do here and for the purpose of determining his own course of action.

When Sh’lok was next able to come in contact with the new Captain Watson, he found him on the Bridge, in the centre seat, looking at Halka V with another of those expressions of desperate restraint, a look as of a man in a trap, while Anderson prepared to fire on the cities that had been programmed for targeting in case the Halkans refused to cooperate. Once again Sh’lok offered Watson his next options in this situation, and was astonished when Watson openly refused them. Quietly, with only a flash of anger here and there, he ordered the scheduled destruction aborted. Sh’lok’s concern became so grave that he actually warned Watson in the presence of the crew that he would have to report his behaviour. And—instead of screams and threats, instead of ordering him to the Booth for insubordination—this Captain Watson told him to go ahead, and left the Bridge.

The subsequent attempt on Watson’s life by Bradstreet was an event that Sh’lok had been expecting for some time. It was perhaps simply an example of the perversity of chance that Bradstreet should have chosen to trigger it now—or (perhaps more likely) Bradstreet had decided to move based on what seemed like the Captain’s sudden irrationality, his wits possibly having been temporarily addled by “a bad beam-up”. The temptation to accompany the Captain as he left the Bridge and attempt to derail the assassination attempt that would certainly follow was very strong, but Sh’lok dared not take the chance. His intervention would be too dangerous for both of them, especially if in any way it aroused Anderson’s suspicions. Watson left, and for the minutes that followed Sh’lok could do little but pace the Bridge and pretend an unconcern he did not feel.

When the word came through from Farrell, the chief of Watson’s personal guard, that the Captain was alive and well and Bradstreet was on the way to the Booth, Sh’lok had been massively relieved—not that any of the crew around him would have been able to perceive any such thing. He called for one of his own security people and went to talk a little more privately to Captain Watson, at least partly because it was, logically, what he would normally have done in such an (admittedly, peculiar) situation.

But also he was most curious to see what kind of reaction would be forthcoming when he once more spoke forthrightly to this man of the danger he was in. Had it been the John Watson who’d earlier beamed down to Halka V, Sh’lok would have known what response to expect — for that man was a creature compact almost entirely of rage, greed, carefully-concealed fear, a certain low cunning, and (to Sh’lok’s mind) fits of near-comical lust… along with the usual Imperially-inculcated bigotry and hatred of competitor species.

What he found instead, for the few minutes they spent together, was a thoughtful man, composed, somewhat grim; all his responses expressive of a cool rationality, despite his having been assaulted (literally) by events and situations for which his normal frame of existence had given him no preparation. And when Sh’lok said to him, “Your orders are of course in contravention of standard Empire procedure. You cannot ignore the consequences…”, instead of calling Sh’lok a fucking interfering idiot and threatening to have him shot for speaking out of turn, _that_ John Watson turned to him with the slightest half-smile on his face, and said, “Is that a threat?”

For some reason, Watson was _amused_ by the warning, or the way Sh’lok had expressed it, or that he _was_ expressing it: perhaps even all three. Sh’lok was so nonplussed by this that he actually had to stand there blinking for a moment before he could work out how to respond. The rest of the warning—that he could not allow this Watson’s aberrations to jeopardise his own position—was delivered to that slight, reflective smile, which did not go away. It remained in place while Watson suggested, rather gently, that he would make a bad enemy. It stayed right where it was while Sh’lok replied that the same was true for him. And when he finished, and went away down the corridor, it was as if he felt that smile still, on his back, like the touch of a hand.

After that he was unsettled enough to need to withdraw to his quarters for a brief period of meditation. He was unable to find any balance there, though, for no matter how he tried to do otherwise, Sh’lok kept finding himself comparing the Captain who had left with the Captain who had returned. He also kept finding that he had come to the truly astonishing conclusion: _…Had the latter been the true Captain of this ship… I could have liked the man. We could have been friends._

And indeed, that was the strangest thing about it. There was something very… _Vulcan_ about this human.

Which made absolutely _no sense._ It was also the kind of sentiment (if Sh’lok had gone in for such things) that he would have kept strictly to himself, for the John Watson who had beamed down to Halka V from _Enterprise_ would have construed such a concept as a deadly insult. Had he ever got wind of Sh’lok saying such a thing, Sh’lok would have been in the Booth or in front of a firing squad within minutes.

Vulcans, after all, were not seen by the Earth-humans who ran the Empire as being in any way equal to humans. Too many Vulcans had initially refused the Empire in the name of the species’ indigenous pacifist culture, which was quickly stamped out by a pragmatic Vulcan planetary government more interested in species survival. And indeed the Vulcans had only survived as part of the Empire by reverting so quickly to the older, more savage and warlike culture that underlay their pacifism. The Empire had realised that further aggressive moves against the Vulcans would cost the Empire far more than it would recoup afterwards… so they had stepped back from the. brink. But there was still much old bad feeling against the Vulcans that had never quite gone away, a mixture of _How dare they resist us_ and _How dare they resist us successfully._ Vulcans did well enough in Starfleet, but were always being tested to see if they were deadly enough to deserve survival… and always being hated when they proved that they were.

Yet here, plainly, was a man who did not merely tolerate him because he was good at what he did: who saw Sh’lok, and respected him… or saw and respected something in him that he found familiar.

It was a mystery. There were few things in his life that Sh’lok loved more, when his work and his duty left him time to pursue them, than mysteries. But he was not left time to pursue this one much further. His computer alerted him that a message had arrived for him from Starfleet Command.

He had been expecting it. The message’s arrival meant that, along with the clock that was already counting down inside his head—for Sh’lok had seen the analysis of that very peculiar Transport, and had had time to run some calculations on the way the field densities in local space were changing—another one was now added.

Perhaps it was a day for breaking regulations. Though Sh’lok was by no means a stranger to such behaviour, in this case the prospect caused him some concern. Yet the thought of that half-smile would not let him be. He called the Captain’s quarters, and warned the man he spoke to of the death sentence now hanging over his head… and even then could hear the faint amusement, the — affection?—underlying his responses. It had been most peculiar.

Eventually he had managed to settle himself somewhat, though the two clocks counting down inside him ticked away, relentless. For the moment Sh’lok sat quiet, examining the data he had, and wondering how to acquire more without either endangering himself or this different Captain Watson further. _Sooner or later—quite soon, actually—he must return whence he came,_ Sh’lok thought. _And I must have my Captain back._

But—strange, treacherous thought— here in the quiet, the oddest idea intruded itself.

 _Yet…_ must _I?_

Sh’lok blinked at that.

…And now there was another problem, as the computer at his elbow came alive with light and its typical processing noise. He studied the pattern of its readout lights for a moment.

“Computer,” he said.

“Ready.”

“Explain computer activity in the engineering section.”

 _Whirr, chirr._ “A security research is in progress.”

“Who is conducting the research?”

“The Captain and Mrs. Hudson.”

“What is the nature of the research?”

“Programme is classified under voice index lock.”

He breathed out in slight relief. They were doing the same calculations he had been doing, then, though he needed no computer for them. They would soon be as aware of both the ticking clocks as he was.

But it was at this point that another telltale began flashing on his board. Sh’lok’s eyes narrowed as he reached out to the console. “Why are you monitoring my communications, Mr. Anderson?”

There was a pause suggestive of Anderson’s annoyance on finding that his new surveillance routine, which he’d thought would be able to get through the defences Sh’lok had installed around his own equipment, was in fact able to do no such thing. “My security board has detected extensive use of computers, Mr. Sh'lok. I was about to inform you.”

Sh’lok declined to respond to so transparent a falsehood. Anderson, probably not noticing, went on, “It's not hard to guess the nature of your order from Starfleet Command. I suggest a connection. The captain suspects… and he’s working on escape, or defence.”

“That is my concern,” Sh’lok said.

 **“** Correct,” Anderson said. “It's your play. I hope you succeed, because the order would fall on me next. And you know how Captain Watson's enemies have a habit of… disappearing.”

He did know, but that was not the issue at the forefront of his mind for the moment. “If I am successful,” Sh’lok said, “you see yourself a step nearer to the captaincy. I do not want to command the _Enterprise._ But if it should befall me, I suggest you remember that my operatives would avenge my death… and some of _them_ are Vulcans.”

The silence that fell before Anderson switched off was eloquent of a man who for the moment felt himself stymied. That suited Sh’lok well, for the moment. He sat back in his desk chair again, arms folded, and once more found himself compelled to consider that bizarrely companionable half-smile, and the man who turned it on him, who trusted him to see it, even in deadly danger.

He wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to have a friend.

_…And one who was also your Captain?_

Sh’lok shook his head. On the face of it, it seemed impossible.

Yet the impossible had already been eliminated once today. Why not again?…

***

John had just closed his communicator and was putting it away when the bedroom door hissed softly and Mary slipped out. That was the only thing about her re-entry that could be considered in any way subtle or demure. She was wearing a boldly coloured, gauzy, low-cut full-body confection in soft stripes and chevrons of emerald, turquoise, cobalt and magenta, and the chevrons (when the draping of the garment moved to display them) pointed rather emphatically to a specific area below her waist. It occurred to John that it might as well have had the words GET IT HERE emblazoned across it. He immediately (if irrationally) felt both embarrassed and incredibly sorry for her, if this was the kind of performance she had to go through to get this universe’s John Watson to take any notice.

“Oiling my traps, darling,” she said as she came closer. “I'm afraid I'm a little out of practice.” That slightly mischievous face that so easily revealed irony or calculation was significantly less mobile at the moment—far less at ease with being tentative. “Maybe that's what happened to us?” Mary was toying with a lock of her hair. “It's very hard for a working officer to shine as a woman every minute… and you demand perfection.”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to imagine too clearly what that expectation was like for her. Right now all he wanted was to be as kind to her as he could under the circumstances. “I’ve never seen perfection,” John said, “but no woman could come closer to it.”

She sat down on a nearby low divan and looked up at him as if the gentle flattery had thrown her completely off her stride. “I remember when you used to talk that way,” she said.

John moved a little closer, not just as part of the role he was playing. She had a genuine magnetism; something inexplicably attractive, half-submerged in her gaze. _And something dangerous,_ he thought. _Because at least a few other captains of this vessel let her get close, got used to this attractive uncertainty…_ And by her own account, they wound up dead. _Yet still: dangerous… and here I am._ “I still do,” he said.

She held out her hands to him. “Prove it.”

...Not just arousal in those eyes, now, but challenge, again just slightly touched by mischief. John took them, sat down by her—

 _Seven minutes,_ said the back of his mind.

John shook his head helplessly at himself, and at the perversity of fate, and the thought of who properly belonged in that bedroom these days. “I’ve got to go…”

Contempt, carefully muted, flared in her eyes, tangled up with anger—again very managed. “Ship's business?” she said. “An important task on the crew deck?”

John felt guilty for having encouraged her even this far. He let go of her hands, got up and headed for the door. Behind him, Mary let out a little breath of bitter laughter. Half-turning, he saw her wrap the folds of the negligee around her and almost huddle into them for a second—then fling them aside again, as if contemptuous of her own pain, or its revelation. Her expression was all too readable: _He led me on just for the fun of hurting me, and I fell for it. Enough of that._

 _“_ Well, I guess it's over,” she said. “Commander Kenno will take me temporarily. He's made that quite clear.” Mary got up gracefully from the divan and strode past him toward the comms screen on the nearby desk. “I'll call a yeoman to help me with my things.”

 _Oh God, what have I done._ “You don’t have to do that,” John said.

She turned and eyed him narrowly. “Are you feeling _sorry_ for me?” Mary said, and stepped closer, looking up into John’s eyes with an intensity in which the anger was starting to slip its leash. “I’m not used to being toyed with, and I don’t intend to put up with it. Intelligence won’t care if I elect to move on now: this ship’s safe enough, in their estimation. So _transfer_ me!”

Mary turned away from him, furious. “On another ship I can hunt fresh game.” The back of his neck prickled a little at the choice of idiom. “I've got my rank—” She stopped, her head snapping around. “Don’t I?”

John merely inclined a little nod of assent at her, suspecting that too much conversation with Mary at this point was likely to be more danger than he had time for right now.

The tightness of her eyes relaxed just a little. “This has been a better life for me than the, the last one,” she said, sounding grim. “I’ve been a captain's woman and I like it. I’ll be one again if I have to go through every officer in the fleet.”

John saw her carriage go erect with determination, and smiled through a moment’s concern for those other poor ships’ captains, who—assuming she _did_ move on—had no idea in Hell what was coming for them. “You could.”

Mary whipped around toward him and all the anger that had been seeping out of her eyes now leapt back into them. _Oh,_ no, _she thought I meant—!_ She took two quick fierce steps toward John, her arm lifted—

He caught the slap halfway and just held her still. Mary refused to give him the satisfaction of a struggle, just glared at him. After a second or so John let go of her hands and took her by the shoulders, shook her a little. “I simply meant that you could be _anything you want to be.”_

For a moment she was plainly shocked to hear a sentiment she would never have expected from him—or rather, from the other him. Yet that look too shifted, and unexpectedly Mary’s gaze, locked on his, was telling John that right now there was one thing she particularly wanted to be.

And right now he so felt for her—as out of her depth, for the moment, as he was—that John gave in to the impulse to let her have that. _Six minutes!,_ said the clock in his head, even as she leaned in toward him. John lowered his face to hers, met her lips with his and let the moment stretch.

A few moments later she leaned back a bit, looking strangely abashed. “It’s been a long time since you've kissed me like that,” she said, her voice a little husky. “You're a stranger, all of a sudden. Mercy to the Halkans, mercy to Sh'lok… to me.”

John held still, wondering if the moment’s impulse had caused him to overplay his part. But Mary simply looked up at him and said, “Am I your woman?”

He held her still by the shoulders until he could find the right form of words for his answer. “You're the Captain's woman until he says you're not.”

John let her go, then, and headed for the door. Halfway there he paused and looked behind, feeling her gaze still resting on him, unchanged, a little bewildered, and finally flickering toward the sliding panel on the wall and back to him again.

Out John went, then, heading for the Transporter room. And as he went down the corridor, if he felt an itching between his shoulderblades as if he was still somehow being watched, he dismissed it. He had much more important things to be thinking about.

***

In the turbolift, John pulled out his communicator again. “Donovan?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Hudders’ signal should be coming through any moment. You know what to do.”

“Got a pretty good idea, sir.” Her voice had actually acquired something of an amused edge.

“Good. Keep Anderson’s attention off that board!”

“I will, sir.”

He hoped she was right. “Good luck. Watson out.” And he put the communicator away as the lift doors opened on the Transporter room’s deck, thinking of how Mrs. Hudson and Dr. Lestrade were up a Jeffries tube somewhere half the ship away, finishing their work, sending a signal—

***

Donovan’s earpiece beeped twice.

_Right. Here we go…_

She took a breath, pulled the earpiece out of her ear and laid it down on the comms console. Then, with every appearance of unconcern and ease, she got up, still carrying her padd stylus in one hand, and meandered down from the console ring into the space by the centre seat. Over toward the helm console Donovan wandered, assuming the look and the manner she’d been planning for some minutes.

That exercise itself had been a tad surreal. Once upon a time, seemingly in another life, she had been fairly interested in what Anderson liked. Then, when she began to realise that he had absolutely no parallel interest in what _she_ liked, things had started to come apart. But the data remained, for her memory was excellent (as a comms officer’s had to be) and though the necessary memories were buried deeper than the least-used of fifteen or twenty interplanetary languages or the details of what Denebian slime devils liked for lunch, it was still there, and she fished it up.

It had made her nose wrinkle a bit, that memory, as it had when she’d first comprehended this particular preference. But Anderson—crass, clueless Anderson—liked _cute._ It was a half-shameful kink for him, the way some very gentle and sweet-tempered people Sally knew went in for bondage or pain play and were guilty about it.

If anything, this was going to make the next few minutes more enjoyable. _If not necessarily less dangerous_ , she thought. But Sally needed to be absolutely sure _this_ Anderson wasn’t looking at that helm console— and if there was any characteristic she felt sure in her bones that the two versions shared, this was going to be it.

_I hope._

She ambled over to the helmsman’s seat and leaned one elbow on the back of it, looking into Anderson’s face as he turned around and actually batting her eyelashes. “You aren't very persistent, Mr. Anderson,” Donovan said, her voice lazy and breathy. “The game has _rules.”_ She positively _cooed_ the word at him. _“_ You're ignoring them. I protest—” She gestured gracefully at her neckline with the stylus, apparently innocently signalling _you_ _look right here now,_ “—and you come back.” She stroked his cheek with the stylus. ”You _didn’t—“_ and she tapped him teasingly on the nose with the stylus on each word— _“come—back.”_

He leered at her and turned away from the console, leaning forward to wrap his arms around her naked waist. _“Now_ you're making sense!”

“I was—” He never saw her initial glance at his board, as he had immediately got busy burying his face against her neck. “—getting bored! Of course—” His hands went up her back and she let them, let his face drop down from her neck and his lips find their way into her cleavage. “—this isn’t the time,” she breathed into his ear as the light started to flash on his console and he was too busy closing his eyes and shivering with arousal to see it, too full of the sound and feel of her warm breath in his ear canal to hear it.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the alarm telltale’s light go dark as the beeping stopped. _About five more seconds of this, to make sure he’s bought it. Four. Three—_

“Any time's a good time…”

 _Two. One._ She leaned back, smiling into his face, as he reached up lazily to cup her breast—

 _—Perfect._ And with unbelievable satisfaction she backhanded Anderson across the face.

He fell back into the helmsman’s seat, completely caught off guard, as Donovan stepped back… and the lazy feral grin with which she favoured him then had no artifice about it at all. _Holy_ shit _how long I must’ve wanted to do that to him…_ “I’m afraid I must have changed my mind,” she purred, concentrating on looking as _cute_ as she knew how. _“…Again.”_

Anderson was still in shock that she would dare do such a thing. It took him a moment to recover enough to start leaning forward again. He snarled at her, “You take a lot of chances, Lieutenant!”

And he leapt out of the chair and came at her—only to find Sally’s dagger, that very sharp, much-ground, nicked-at-the-edges dagger—pointed right in his face, just under his nose. The message was clear enough: _Want a mate to that scar on the other side? Move a centimeter closer and I’ll install it._

“So do you, mister,” Donovan said softly. “So do you.”

Never taking her eyes off him, she backed up the stairs to the upper ring and stalked around toward the turbolift doors. As the junior comms officer moved toward her, she handed him her padd stylus. “Take over for me,” Donovan said.

The junior crewman, smiling the same slight smile as the rest of the Bridge crew who’d just had a little more entertainment in mid-shift than they’d expected, took the stylus and went to her post. Donovan paused, prepared to put her dagger away, caught Anderson’s eye again mockingly, and sheathed the dagger like someone who’d had in mind sheathing it somewhere else entirely. Then she headed for the lift.

She caught a glimpse of Anderson getting up out of his seat to come after her as the doors closed on her, but also saw the two security guards who’d been posted on either side of it move to block him from following. Donovan grinned, and as the lift started moving, pulled out her communicator. “Mrs. Hudson! All clear. On my way to Sickbay.”

She let out a breath of relief. _And no more cute for me!_ “Now it’s up to the Captain,” she heard Lestrade say.

 _Wherever he is,_ Donovan thought. _Hope his luck’s as good as mine—!_

***

John was leaning over the Transporter console from the front, completely focused on making the adjustments in the exact order Mrs. Hudson had described to him, because if he got them out of order he would have to zero out the command buffer in the console and there was no spare time for that—things were running close enough to the wire as they were. It wasn’t as if this kind of thing was beyond him, hardly that, he’d spent some time as a Transporter officer in previous years, on previous ships, it was just one more of the jobs someone in line for command learned to do, but when you sat in the centre seat this kind of specialised work was something you had no choice but to lose touch with, and so you had to be extra careful when circumstance threw you back into it. He flicked the controls over one by one in the prescribed patterns, set them, locked them. _Transport initiation options. Remote setting option._ _Remote power to pattern buffer. Engine power option set. Feed setting lock—_

—Door swish.

John froze.

“Please restrict your movements, Captain,” came the soft dry baritone.

A half glance sideways showed him the phaser Sh’lok was holding on him. John held still—but only just. _One more setting to make. Just one more—_

Sh’lok moved quietly toward John and relieved him of his phaser and his dagger. “What are you doing?” Sh’lok said.

 _After this I’m going to pay attention to those damn hunches to leave someplace right away. Otherwise I’d have been done with this and out of here. Is anything_ else _going to go wrong today?_ “Are you going to shoot me now, Sh'lok?” John said. “I thought I had until dawn.”

“I shall make that decision. Since your return from the planet, you've behaved in a most atypical and illogical manner. And while I am almost certain I know why… I have questions.”

Up until this moment John would have thought that his adrenals couldn’t possibly have much left to contribute to the day he’d been having. But in the moment itself he discovered that opinion to be seriously inaccurate as the flush of liquid fight-or-flight heat flushed up and out through him from his lower back. And with good reason; the only Sh’lok more dangerous to deal with than one who felt sure he knew what was going on was one who had questions.

All John could think of to do was to fold his arms as casually as possible on the top of the Transporter console and say, “Shoot. You’re wasting time.”

“I shall not waste time with you,” Sh’lok said. “You’re too determined, too resolute once you've made up your mind. But Doctor Lestrade has a plenitude of human weaknesses—sentimental, soft. You may not tell me what I want to know, but _he_ will.”

John could have rolled his eyes at that, for the statement suggested that this Sh’lok and this universe’s Lestrade had the same kind of mocking relationship going on as his own universe’s officers did... and the same kind of well-concealed understanding running beneath it. _And considering the way this place operates, it’s a wonder they’re both still alive!_ But for the moment he simply said, as grimly as he could, “You’re running a big risk, Sh’lok.”

John’s own Sh’lok would normally have demanded to know what John meant, but this one plainly had no intention of taking the bait. “I have the phaser, Captain, and I do not intend to simply disappear as so many of your opponents have in the past.” He gestured minutely toward the door with the phaser. “If you please. Sickbay.”

John breathed out— _one more setting, fuck it all, just_ one—! ...and went.

***

When the Sickbay door hissed open before him, Lestrade’s eyes and Donovan’s and Mrs. Hudson’s all went briefly wide with relief on seeing him, and then wider, _not_ with relief, when they saw who was behind him.

Sh’lok’s face went still and his eyes lit with an expression that John knew very well: deduction, in progress at high speed. “Yes, of course,” he said, “the entire landing party.” Sh’lok gestured with the phaser, his attention already going to the shocked-looking Lestrade. “Captain, stand over there. Doctor, it is time for answers—”

John had no fucking intention of standing anywhere except right where he was— in fact, no intention at this point except to have something go wrong for somebody who _wasn’t_ him or one of his people. He spun in place, knocked the phaser out of Sh’lok’s grip, and punched him in the jaw.

 _Should have punched him harder,_ John thought, as Sh’lok simply shook his head, grabbed hold of John and more or less threw him over the nearest diagnostic bed. But John never really liked punching Sh’lok when they worked out, and had for the longest time never understood his unwillingness to do anything that might mar that nose or those teeth— Never mind, now Mrs. Hudson was heading for him, and she and Sh’lok worked out fairly frequently. _As soon as I get up there’s a fair chance of us dogpiling him, after all we’re four to one—_

Sh’lok, however, was showing no willingness to stand still for being dogpiled. He simply shoved Hudders out of the way, and Donovan after her, and when Lestrade flung himself at him Sh’lok ducked and grabbed him and threw him much harder in the direction he was already going. John vaulted over the diagnostic bed at him and kicked him in the chest and into the nearby wall, but Sh’lok stayed on his feet, braced against the wall, and backhanded John across the face.

John discovered that this Sh’lok had no compunctions about noses or teeth, and just managed to turn his head in time to avoid catching the blow full on. Another one came at him from the other direction, though, knocking John sprawling on his back onto the diagnostic table, and a second later Sh’lok was coming down with interlaced hands to club him in the chest. John rolled out off the way, off the end of the table and onto his feet. Without a second’s hesitation Sh’lok put a boot in John’s gut, kicked him into yet another diagnostic table and tried to tackle him down onto it—

Donovan went for Sh’lok then. John couldn’t see what was happening, as he was still trying to get back to his feet after being gut-kicked by a Vulcan, but the crash of a body into a wall and then onto the floor suggested that she might be out of it for some moments. By the time he got up again Lestrade was once more being thrown over Sh’lok’s back and into some kind of sample cabinet, and once more Hudders tried to engage by sweeping Sh’lok’s feet out from under him, and got body-blocked off to one side—

 _We don’t have time for this!_ John thought, increasingly desperate at the thought of the two universes slipping further and further out of synch while this madness went on. He managed to push Sh’lok up against the wall again and land a few more punches, but within seconds he was on the floor again while Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson went at Sh’lok together—

John scrambled desperately to his feet and suddenly found Donovan in front of him pushing something large and white into his hands. He stared at it stupidly for a moment. _Bones’s Mugato skull?_

And without further ado John came up behind Sh’lok, who was in the act of throwing Mrs. Hudson into the nearest wall, and smashed the skull down on Sh’lok’s head.

The skull shattered into a hundred pieces, but Sh’lok went down, sprawled limp and unconscious a second later. John stood there gasping for a moment, then nodded thanks to Donovan and went to help Mrs. Hudson up. “How much time, Hudders?”

“Hardly fifteen minutes, John! The field density between the two universes is degrading very fast—”

John stared down at Lestrade, who was still on the floor, thinking that he was hurt. But he was bent over Sh’lok. “Help me get him on the table.”

John looked down in astonishment and horror. “Well, come on!” Lestrade said, urgent, “help me get him on the table! He's got a subdural hematoma forming; he'll die without immediate treatment!”

A thrill of awful regret went through John at the sight of the suddenly and horribly lax face there on the floor. Even in this version of Sh’lok it was always so full of an incisive life. _This was_ way _more wrong than I had in mind—_

Together John and Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson boosted him up so that Lestrade could start work. John leaned over the table and watched, feeling like one large desperately thrumming nerve. “Everything laid in, Hudders? The time lag so the operator can get into the transporter chamber?”

“All laid in.” She pushed some disarranged hair out of her eyes. “But for pity’s sake, come _on,_ Lestrade! We're taking a chance of not getting back home!”

Lestrade already had a microscanner out and was waving it over Sh’lok while his attention was riveted to the readouts over the bed. “We’ll get home! This won't take long.”

John stood there twitching, once more feeling that itching high up on his back, as if someone was staring at him. “Fourteen minutes,” Mrs. Hudson said. “We’ve got to go!”

“Would you shut up?” Lestrade snapped. “I can save his life!” But then he took a breath, turned to John. “Do you want me to stop, John? It’ll only take a minute!”

John looked down at the still face and even now, even in this horrible moment, had to smile with affection. “He is very much like our own Mr. Sh'lok, isn't he,” he said softly. He nodded to Lestrade. “You’ve got that minute.”

Lestrade went back to work. “Just a little time,” he said. “He’ll live—”

The door to Sickbay hissed open.

 _What the ever-loving_ fuck _is it_ now! John thought, as Anderson and three red-shirted Security men walked in.

John took a step forward. _Buy Bones the time he needs. Brazen it out._ “What is _this,_ Mr. Anderson?” he demanded in his best Ruthless Martinet voice.

Anderson had slipped his knife out of its scabbard and was playing with it. “Mr. Sh’lok has orders to kill you, Captain.” He glanced over toward the diagnostic bed with considerable dry amusement. “And he’ll succeed… apparently.” A nasty grin suffused his face as he waved the knife suggestively in John’s direction. “You’ll also appear to have killed _him,_ after a fierce battle. Regrettable… but it will leave _me_ in command.”

 _‘A fierce battle,’_ John thought. _Four men… three phasers._

 _But we’re not just some red-shirted henchmen to be vaporised without a second thought. To pull off what he’s discussing, pretty sure that after the fact he’s going to need_ corpus delicti.

He shot a glance at Donovan and Hudders beside him: saw their ever-so-fractional nods. He didn’t have to look back at Lestrade: he knew what the answer would be, when he had a patient on the table.

 _…All right,_ John Watson thought: and took a step forward.


	5. ACT FOUR

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain John Watson makes a last-ditch play to free his trapped crew from the deadly schemes of the malevolent, ambitious Security Chief Anderson and get them all safely beamed back to their own _Enterprise._ But to achieve this final goal -- and one potentially even more important -- he has to try to earn the trust of this dark universe's Sh'lok in the only way that will work. But can he afford the price he may have to pay?...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks kindly to all the sweet-natured readers who've put up with the late posting of these final chapters. If everything goes well, I expect to be posting the end of this episode within the next seven days. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Anderson gestured idly with his knife at one of his henchmen. “You know what to do,” he said.

The man put away his phaser and began to move toward John. One of the others trained his phaser on Mrs. Hudson, the third on Donovan.

“Hold still, Captain,” Anderson said softly. “She doesn’t have to die if you cooperate. Just hold still and take your medicine. It doesn’t have to take too long, if you’re sensible.”

Donovan twitched toward Anderson, her face twisting with fury. “Oh, don’t worry,” Anderson said, smiling evilly. _“You_ don’t have to die either. In fact, I’d much rather you didn’t. You and I have _so_ much unfinished business—”

John’s eyes flicked from Anderson to his henchman as he calculated his odds. _Can’t just stand here. Hudders won’t just hold still to be shot. Neither will Donovan, but doesn’t matter, I’m not going to take the chance of leaving her to_ this _fucker’s tender mercies. Time to make a choice, Watson—_

John took a breath and locked eyes with the henchman. Then he took another step forward, feeling the hairs prickle and rise on the back of his neck—

And with a sudden bizarre high singing whine and a flash of light, the henchman vanished.

Anderson and the other two henchmen stared in astonishment at where the vanished man had been. John sucked in a breath of surprise, glancing upward as if it was possible to meet the eyes of the woman he was sure was in his quarters right now, watching this scene unfold on the little screen hidden behind the sliding panel, adjusting a control. _Don’t start moving around all of a sudden, you wouldn’t like to accidentally complicate matters—_

A second later Anderson’s second henchman, the one standing near the diagnostic table by the door, vanished too. John glanced from side to side just enough to see the astonished looks on Hudders’s and Donovan’s faces, but didn’t move otherwise, willed them not to move either—

And the third henchman vanished too, and there stood Anderson all alone. He dropped into a half-crouch, a defensive posture, the knife up: but it was entirely reactive. He was terrified.

John waited a second to see if he would vanish too—but no, there he stood, still circling his knife between him and John as if he now had any chance of actually getting close enough to use it. _That’s as much as Mary’s going to do,_ John thought. _She’s leaving him to us—_

This still implied all kinds of things that John needed at least a few breaths’ time to think through, and couldn’t spare just now. Mary had been watching all this, probably from the time he got here—the memory of that strange itch between the shoulder blades was definitely with him—and it seemed safest to assume that she’d seen and heard everything. So she almost certainly understood that the landing party was not from this universe, that she had been dealing with a different John Watson entirely, that it now lay in her power to do— _what, exactly? And meanwhile I now have a professional assassin that I owe a big favour to, all of a sudden!_

But never mind the strategic considerations, because here came Anderson at him with that knife— _Not going to let him control this dialogue for a single second more, too damn many other things here need my attention right now!_ John moved nearer to Anderson, quick but cautious, getting close, tempting him to lunge a couple of times— then moved to his left until the diagnostic table was between them. _Seriously rattled,_ John thought as Anderson not only followed, but lunged at him across it. _Tsk, somebody’s been neglecting his hand to hand training, guess this is what happens when you’ve got henchmen doing everything for you—_

John caught Anderson’s forward wrist, sidehand-chopped the knife out of it, then grabbed him by the elbow and yanked him hard across the table. A second edgehand strike to the back of his neck just at the base of his skull, and down Anderson went, slumping by the table, collapsed against the wall.

Mrs. Hudson slipped forward to make sure Anderson was really out, quickly confiscating the knife and chucking it away. She turned to John. “John, come _on,_ we’ve barely got ten minutes!”

John nodded, stepped back to the diagnostic bed and Lestrade, and took him urgently by the arm. “Let’s go, Bones!”

  
Lestrade looked up briefly from what he was doing to Sh’lok with the scanner and another instrument. “I can’t leave him here to die, John! You get down to the Transporter room and make sure it’s clear. I'll be there in five minutes.”

“No longer!”

“I guarantee it. Now, go on, _please!”_

John nodded Donovan toward the door, dropped his hand to squeeze Lestrade’s forearm briefly, glanced once at the unconscious Sh’lok, and headed out after Donovan and Mrs. Hudson.

***

Lestrade was relieved when they finally got the hell out of his way. It was always a nuisance trying to deal with a relatively acute procedure when nonmedical people were hanging about and fussing.

In his own sickbay this would have been a straightforward business to handle: a compressed skull fracture complicated by torn blood vessels bleeding into the space between the skull and its internal protective layers, putting pressure on the brain. The bone repair was the most problematic part to deal with quickly, as the adhesion between the _dura mater_ and _pia mater,_ and between the _dura_ and the bone, could be skittish. But when you were stuck in a place like this, where equipment had been moved around and some drugs were missing or replaced by congeners (particularly cheap or inadequately tested ones) that Greg didn’t trust: _this_ was a bit of a nightmare when you had something to do in a hurry.

It also didn’t help at the moment that the Vulcan _dura mater,_ compared to the Earth-human one, was terrifyingly robust. Intercranial bleeds that would blow right through a human _dura_ would simply run up against the Vulcan one and be forced to extravasate sideways into the subdural space or push back down into the brain tissue, potentially causing terrible damage. And Sh’lok’s _dura,_ being an engineered thing, was a compromise between Vulcan and human tissue structures, and therefore both miraculous and damnably unique. Fortunately, Greg had had to deal with more than enough of Sh’lok’s brain trauma issues in the relatively short time they’d served together, and therefore (even without any remaining detailed memory of the godawful surgical events on Omicron Ceti VI) knew his way around the merely physical aspects of Sh’lok’s cerebral contents pretty well.

Which was a minor relief at a moment like this, though Greg was still cursing under his breath at how badly supplied this Sickbay was with the kinds of drugs that best suited Sh’lok’s finicky anatomy. The lack implied some uneasy things either about this universe’s Lestrade’s attitude toward Sh’lok, or (another possibility, both less and more disturbing) his unwillingness to rock the cultural boat by ordering in more than minimal amounts of them. There was just _barely_ enough kethimirizine to make up a decent inject for the control of the localised tissue recovery and regrowth in the _dura,_ and he had to do not one, not two, but _three_ damn microtransports of the blood oozing out of the compromised vessels to compensate for the low dosage… two of them after Anderson and his thugs came marching in, and one while John was enthusiastically kicking Anderson’s sorry arse.

But now Sh’lok’s vitals were looking much less shocky than they had, and his BP was looking better too, not that it ever looked that good by human standards to begin with. But then it was also a compromise. One of the things Lestrade often wished he could do was get a look at the paperwork in which the genetics people who’d supervised the engineering of Amanda’s and Sarek’s parturition would have laid out the details of the anatomy of what they intended to build, and compared it to how it actually turned out. But there were all kinds of privacy issues involved, and odds were strong he’d never get to see Sh’lok’s user’s manual. _Probably going to have to write it myself,_ he thought, annoyed, as the depressed fracture of Sh’lok’s cranium finished everting itself, the _dura_ finished reknitting, and the brain tissue expanded gently back to where it belonged.

Greg spent a few moments more eyeing the readouts, making sure that the briefly compressed grey matter had suffered no ill effects from its little adventure. The ithektomorin in the final little cocktail he’d just administered would make sure that the potentially damaging serum chemistry secondary to such a transient cerebral insult would be minimised, if not completely avoided. It was just a matter now of checking to see that Sh’lok’s consciousness levels were heading for being on the mend as well. Then he could get out of here and down to the Transporter room. _Wouldn’t be unusual if even_ he _was out of it for half an hour or so, but this isn’t bad, brain activity’s good, he won’t need to do that healing trance thing, just as well in the circumstances, and actually, look at the K regulator readings, call it fifteen minutes max. Time to get out of here—_

Greg took one final glance down at his unusual patient—and realised with a start that the eyes of the man he’d been treating were open. They were looking up at him with a most unsettling expression, one that Sh’lok was still too recently awake to completely control. The look in his eyes was one of astonishment, of utter perplexity. Then came an expression that Greg had seen more than once before, though Sh’lok had often enough tried to disguise it under his normal deadpan look; the eyes always gave it away. It was one of raging curiosity, yoked in this instance to an equally raging anger at being confronted with something Sh’lok didn’t understand and desperately needed to.

Sh’lok sat up on the diagnostic bed, swung around with what under the circumstances was frankly surprising speed, and gripped Greg’s forearm tight. “The Captain let me live,” he said. _“Why did he do that?_ Explain it to me.”

Greg froze. The ticking clock was on his mind, and also the need not to say or reveal anything to this man that would make it impossible for them all to get home.

Sh’lok shook Greg’s arm as if trying to shake an answer out of him. When one wasn’t immediately forthcoming, he got up off the bed, still gripping Greg’s arm, and step by step forced him back against the Sickbay wall. Caught in that iron grip, Greg couldn’t do a thing except stare in horror as Sh’lok lifted his free hand and carefully placed his fingers against Greg’s face—

Abruptly he found he couldn’t move a muscle, not even his eyes; couldn’t look away from the terrifying intensity of the expression on Sh’lok’s face, moving closer and closer to his. And something else was moving closer too, something dreadful, concentrated on Greg with horrifying single-mindedness… encroaching on him, invading him, inexorably pushing his thoughts, his mind, up against the far walls of his being as his body was pushed up against the wall. Both outside and inside him, a voice that had been familiar but was now simply frightening was saying, “Our minds are merging, Doctor. Our minds are _one._ I feel what you feel. I know what you know—”

And just as Greg was about to be forced under the dark surface of another being’s will, possibly to drown there, he heard the Sickbay door hiss open. Then someone came hurriedly in, muttering “Dammit Bones, can’t believe I nearly went back out there without a bloody— _Oh no you don’t, mister!”_

Abruptly the darkness and the immobility came undone as Sh’lok was forcibly yanked away from Lestrade. When his eyes started working again, Greg gasped for breath at the sight of John Watson, slapping a hastily scooped-up phaser against his hip and shoving the momentarily off-balance Sh’lok back against the diagnostic bed. “Still got questions, huh?” John growled. “Then let’s get you sorted!”

Lestrade shook his head to clear it and saw Sh’lok’s face twist into a snarl of frustration. His hands shot up to grip John’s face as he’d gripped Greg’s—but John’s expression went fiercely resolute as his own hands lifted and his fingers pressed into matching locations on _Sh’lok’s_ face. In an eyeblink Sh’lok’s face went from angry to shocked, his eyes going wide—

“Bones!” the Captain said, glancing just once sideways to where the doctor was leaning half-dazed against the wall. _“Lestrade!_ Snap out of it! Get down there with the others and wait for me. This won’t take long.”

Then, as Lestrade straightened and (for once completely unwilling to argue the point) staggered away, he saw John Watson’s gaze lock back on Sh’lok’s with an fierce angry intensity that was not only unexpected, but positively alarming.

“My mind to your mind,” the Captain said, his eyes narrowing. “My thoughts to your thoughts, Sh’lok. _Right—this—minute!”_

***

John knew from a good number of discussions and intimate explorations with his own Sh’lok that there were a number of ways in which a mindmeld could proceed, depending on the relationship between the participants and the reason for the meld. Straightforward information-gathering could be very simple (if the participants trusted one another or if one was much stronger than the other) or quite difficult (if one was resisting, or the beings in the meld were more evenly balanced in terms of strength). And John knew, because Sh’lok had both told him so and _shown_ him so, that in terms of overall power and precision, John’s mind was no match for his.

But what John _did_ have—and Sh’lok had admitted it with considerable admiration—was a surprisingly ferocious mental energy and drive that would make it possible for him to penetrate deep into another’s mind before they could do much to stop him. Normally this wouldn’t do John much good on his own. He wasn’t Vulcan, after all, and didn’t have the experience yet, maybe would never have enough, to _initiate_ a meld. But that wasn’t an issue now, since _Sh’lok_ had initiated this one, assuming he’d have no competition in managing it.

 _Bad assumption,_ John thought with slightly wicked satisfaction as he pressed inward through the suddenly panicky darkness of the vestibule space that had sprung up between their minds. _As you’re about to find out…_

He and his own Sh’lok had tussled mind-to-mind this way a number of times, testing their respective abilities, seeing who could get the upper hand and who could keep it. John had quickly learned that the experience was much like their hand-to-hand sparring sessions in several ways. Sh’lok was far stronger than John, but John could be far quicker than expected. And while Sh’lok was incredibly observant and perceptive, and swift to learn John’s moves, John could always surprise him at least once and gain a lot of ground before Sh’lok could find a way to interfere.

Right now, as he pushed through the darkness, John understood that he’d already given this Sh’lok a taste of that surprise. _Got to keep moving fast, though._ Sh’lok was still less than perfectly in control of this shared mindspace, so John hurriedly made and locked in the alteration in their joint timesense that would cause realtime minutes to seem like hours. _Okay,_ he thought, feeling it sink in as all around him things started to seem to slow down. _Now to find Sh’lok and sort him out._

The shock of having his mind invaded _back_ had made Sh’lok briefly withdraw from direct confrontation. The move was of course tactical. John’s own Sh’lok had shown him what a Vulcan did who suddenly lost control of a meld: they retreated to a safe place or inner stronghold to recoup. _And I know within three guesses where that is,_ John thought, moving hurriedly through the fog of unease that presently surrounded him. _I could waste time searching around, but why? I’ve got a real good guess where he is. And since this is Sh’lok we’re talking about and he isn’t sure what I’ll do and hates guessing, he won’t anticipate_ me _turning up there right off the bat._

But then John was alerted by the gradual thinning of the fog around him. He stopped still, and a moment later as the fog dissipated he became aware of a solid surface under his feet.

He looked around and up, and even through all the pain and terror and the urgency of the need to get out of here and get back to getting home, he had to take a breath and shake his head in wonder. John found himself standing under an immense sky that leaned down vastly to a horizon that seemed somehow _stretched_ —far further away than an Earth horizon would have been. High up above him in the depths of that sky, stars burned many-coloured in constellations some of which were still familiar, for 40 Eridani was not all that far away from Earth. Those constellations blazed down on John and the dark reddish sand on which he stood: great ridged dunes of it, stretching away into a distant starlit dimness, faintly silver-radiant out at the edge of things.

A hot wind, dryly fragrant, ran over those dunes, shaping them, blowing a thin haze of sand and dust off their tops. John breathed in the scent of that wind and shivered briefly, for he would have recognised it anywhere. It was Vulcan; and it was _his_ Vulcan, who bore some of this scent with him, wound into his genes and his pheromones. Somewhere over the horizon of this arid, empty, gorgeously desolate landscape was the Place of Marriage and Challenge, where for the two of them everything had changed.

But beautiful as this vista was, it wasn’t where John needed to be. This was a disguise, a distraction—an attempt at deception, inviting John to waste valuable time hunting across it for Sh’lok, and finally to run out of time and go away.

 _Not going to work,_ John thought. _You’re still Sh’lok, and you still had a mother from Earth. I know what she loved; you’ve told me. And she taught you to love it too. So odds are it’s in here somewhere, buried deep, made yours in this space, made_ real. _And you’re in there keeping quiet, hoping I’ll get discouraged and leave—_ John shook his head again, clenched his fists and unclenched them, closed his eyes.

A thought came up: _what if you’re all wrong, what if he’s_ not _there after all, what if this universe is too different? You’re wasting time! You won’t get home! You’ll be stranding your crewmen here for the rest of their lives on a hunch!_

But there was an extra edge to the thought that told John it wasn’t original with him. It was imposed… suggested.

 _Oh really,_ John thought. _Screw that!_ And he laid his will as he’d been taught to do, not on his seeming surroundings, but upon the mental structure underlying them.

 _Not interested in here,_ he thought. _…Interested in_ there! And he showed the mindspace around him exactly what and “where” he meant.

At that the landscape shivered under his feet, like the pelt of a horse stung by a biting fly and trying to shake it off. But John stood his ground and bore down harder, the way he did when he and Sh’lok were sparring and (however briefly) he had his sparring partner pinned and was shoving him down into the mat.

In response, all around him the landscape shivered harder and the wind started to rise. John shifted his balance and braced himself against the wind, and _bore down._

 _You’re going to let me through now,_ he said to the mind that surrounded him. _To where I want to go. To where_ you _are. Let—me—_ through!

…Resistance, _resistance!_ The ground shook and the wind rose to a scream. And John _bore down—_

The landscape vanished, snuffed out like a candle and replaced by utter darkness. The ground went out from under John’s feet. For long moments he fell helplessly through dark stifling air, and then came down _slam_ on something rough and hard.

The effort had cost him. John lay there against the hard, shifting surface and groaned softly as he spent a moment recovering himself from the impact. But only a moment. _No time for this, get_ up—

There was little light here, just a red-golden dimness that it took the eyes of his mind a few moments to get used to. By that faint light John could start to make out more and more of the glitter of great heaps and piles of gold and gems all around him, shorthand for someone’s mental treasures—the gathered data of a lifetime, every “jewel” and “coin” analysed and assessed and classified by the hoard’s careful curator.

 _I was right!_ John thought. And the hair went up on the back of his neck at the unmistakeable feeling of being watched. _Good, because that means you’re right where I want you!_ _Now then—_

Before Sh’lok could have time to react, John reached out in mind for a part of the virtual environment that he’d discovered he too could control in a meld, if he acted first. _He won’t waste time fighting me passively for control. He’ll confront me directly._ And here the space itself provided him with the symbology John needed. He shut his eyes for a moment, reached out with both hands, and imagined himself slamming a pair of tall doors shut. It took no longer than that to seal them both together into this mindspace, making escape from it impossible without John’s cooperation.

In answer he heard a dark, deep boom… the gates of this virtual Erebor slamming shut in the distance, confirmation of what he’d done. And following that, as its owner realised what had happened, came a long, low, infuriated growl.

John knew that growl. He heard something quite like it occasionally when Sh’lok had him pinned and suddenly got flipped himself—and it made John grin. “Sorry,” he said into the echoing darkness. “…Or, wait, you know what? No I’m _not!_ You’d have left me climbing dunes and getting my boots full of sand for God knows how long. Think I prefer it down here, thank you very much. So come on out, because we need to talk, and even in here there’s not a lot of time.”

The ominous growling went on. Under his boots, the surface on which John stood began to slip and slide, and from deep below it he could feel something like a very localised earthquake starting. Everything began to vibrate. Gems jumped and bounced from where they lay, buzzing with the force imparted to them from below, and coins rang against each other like tiny cracked bells as they slid and piled. In the dimness John could see whole hills of treasure heaving and glittering as they collapsed away from each other or down into themselves, and something that had been hidden started to rear up from beneath them.

Massively the great shape shouldered up through the heaps of intellectual wealth—a shape all scaled in dark red, as red as venous human blood, red as the sands of the vast Vulcan desert John had seen above. The shoulders came up first, with the great wings folded down tight but ready to spread; then the rest of the huge long body, narrowing down from the broad wiry-muscled chest to a narrow waist and whiplash tail that thrashed around angrily, sending gold pieces scattering like so much hard yellow hail.

Then last of all, up out of the sliding gold came the long neck and great head, sword-fanged, spear-spined, gigantic, bending down over John and dwarfing him where he stood. The dragon’s jaw dropped as it snarled softly—a huge sound, echoing all through that vast space—and John looked down its throat to see where the deadly fire broiled deep inside, and the eyes, as silver-blue as ice, narrowed and glared at him.

John looked up in absolute wonder, shaking his head, unable to keep himself from grinning. “That,” he said, “is just _amazing!”_

The snarl started to shade up into a roar. But John saw something a bit uncertain stirring in the pale blue eyes.

“It really is,” John said. “Absolutely fantastic! But you know what? I think _I_ wouldn’t mind a little of that action.”

The building roar started to fade down a bit as its owner stared at John.

“Won’t bother with all the drama, though,” he said. “Another time, another place, maybe. But for right now—”

At the moment he didn’t quite dare close his eyes to make concentration easier. But having been coached by a master, John was still able enough to grip the virtual space immediately surrounding him with his mind and set his intention into it.

And a second later there was another dragon in that space. It was less long and lanky, more compactly built. Its scales were not red but golden, many edged with black. And nose to tail it was half again the size of the one it faced.

John grinned a tight angry dragon’s grin. “Best two falls out of three,” he growled. “If you insist.”

His adversary’s eyes widened and its roar trailed off into a shocked rumble.

“But do you really want to waste time doing this?” John said, his voice echoing with his certainty in that huge space. “Because we’ve not got a lot of that to spare. You may be stronger here, but you have _no_ way to predict what I’ll do. And I’ll do all kinds of things you can’t _possibly_ imagine to save my people. …And maybe even _you.”_

All the space around him shivered with a peculiar, disbelieving shock.

 _“Sh’lok,”_ John said.

 _Name the name and its owner appears,_ the old legends said; _speak the truth and it manifests._ And sure enough, there this universe’s Sh’lok stood, erect, glaring at John. But the glare was uneasy.

“Better,” John said, and shook the dragon-shape off himself. He pulled his uniform tunic down (somehow it always rode up after one of these transformations, which for some reason unfailingly reduced his own Sh’lok to helpless merriment) and clambered up a small hill of gold coin to join the other man.

“How can this be happening!” Sh’lok demanded. “How can you be here at all, how can you be _doing this?”_

“Because I know another Sh’lok,” John said, “and he’s taught me a few things.”

_“Impossible—”_

John shook his head. “Here I am,” he said. “Doing what I’ve done. Eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains—” He held out his hands in a sort of manual shrug. “Must be the truth, huh?”

Sh’lok’s jaw actually dropped.

“So,” John said. “Shortly I’m going to have to get out of here and get back to my people so we can all get ourselves the hell home.”

“To another universe,” Sh’lok said, as if daring John to disagree with him.

John sighed. “Should’ve known you knew already. From the very beginning, didn’t you? Because _my_ Sh’lok probably would have. Hell, he deduced two whole tours of duty from looking at my damn tan lines, so why not? I probably just wasn’t moving right or something.”

“You— Yes,” Sh’lok said after a moment. “Your kinesics were far too open. And also your—”

“Fine,” John said. “Thank you. Moving on now to us getting my people back where we belong. You going to help us with that? Or am I going to have to remove you from play?”

The Vulcan’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, not like _that,”_ John said. “Please! Would I have turned Lestrade loose on you if I didn’t want you alive?”

Sh’lok moved a little closer to him, looking at John somewhat suspiciously. “I had been about to query him on that,” he said.

“‘Query,’” John said, and snorted. “Yeah, and it’d be nice if before we left you apologised to him for the _utter_ fucking lack of consent. _Seriously,_ Sh’lok! The man risks his own chances of getting home to save your life and you pull something like _that?_ You should be ashamed.”

To do him credit, this Sh’lok did have the grace to look abashed for a second. But then that face sealed over into the old familiar Vulcan deadpan look. “Your alternate universe—”

“From my point of view, _this_ is the alternate one,” John said. “Sh’lok, I’m no physicist and I’m short of ways to describe where mine might lie in relationship to yours. You’re going to have to work that out from what little data’s available. But at the very least, I can tell you that ours is generally a lot more, well, _benign—”_

And out of reflex, John did what he’d have done with Sh’lok at home when they were in meld: instead of trying to tell the other, he _showed_ him in a quick dense downpour of imagery. Glimpses of life in a Federation mostly at peace, with trouble sometimes flaring out at the edges of things, of course, and difficulties with the Romulans and Klingons, yes—but hardly an Empire busy with grinding other competing cultures into abject surrender or oblivion. The “near Federation” as a young John Watson had seen it during his Academy training— Starfleet San Francisco, Starfleet Utopia Planitia and Saturn Reservation; the near-Earth Starbases at Pluto Outer and Oort Inner, at Alphacent, Wolf 359 and 61 Cygni / Flying Star. His crew assignments on Starfleet vessels as John climbed through the ranks, ensign to lieutenant to lieutenant commander on _Yorktown_ and _Lovell_ and the old _Farragut,_ under Captains and Commodores who to a man or woman or person were tough and smart and sometimes even kind but always (in John’s experience) also fair, and always ready to do whatever needed doing to keep their crews alive. Training missions and then real ones, journeys through endless situations of terror but also unexpected wonder, where there were tragedies and accidents but also glorious successes—

Lives lost, but so many lives saved; amazing worlds and peoples discovered and survived. Battles, yes, but none of them genocidal. Many more wars stopped than started. A Federation unquestionably imperfect—what else could you expect in an imperfect universe?— but genuinely working to be better. A gathering of worlds and peoples that was growing all the time, not because it was forcing people to join it, but because they wanted to be a part of it. The infinite diversity, the infinite combinations, slowly spreading out across a vast volume of space that was being made safer for them all the time—

John stood there breathing hard at experiencing so many memories so intensely, for there was someone else in there with him now doing it too, with a powerful sense of both astonished wonder and the healthy skepticism of someone examining a too-positively presented situation to find the inevitable catch. _That_ mind was interpenetrating his more forcefully now, having quickly found its balance again and once more taking the initiative after its initial shocked retreat. For a short time John had trouble catching his breath as he reconciled this Sh’lok’s fierce, near-forensic examination of his memories—which was quite familiar—with the man’s trying-to-stay-aloof, hopeful-but-embarrassed-to-be-hopeful reaction to finding them genuine.

And now that other mind, so incisive but so eager to find the truth of something it had never dared contemplate before, was diving in deeper, out of the situational and into the personal, the emotional. _—Weaknesses_ , the coldly diagnostic side of Sh’lok had adjudged them: _sentimental, soft—_ Yet there was still someone in there who wanted to see what softness and sentiment might actually be _good_ for, why humans were so insistent on keeping them around in the first place, instead of abandoning them as liabilities. That mind dove swiftly inward and soon found the outer core of John Watson, assessing it with some astonishment and pressing in deeper still. And as it did so, inevitably it came up against John’s experience of another Vulcan... and then intimate contact with the Vulcan himself.

Here John had to keep himself under tight control so as not to give way to his initial response—to push the other straight the hell back out of matters that would normally have been absolutely none of his fucking business. _But there’s nothing normal about this situation,_ John suddenly found himself thinking, unnerved though he was. _Let him learn what he needs to be whole._

And then John started wondering whether that was even really his own thought.

Sh’lok’s first response to seeing himself as John had first seen him, knocked sprawling on the floor of a flat in Starfleet San Francisco’s transient accommodation, was to simply stand stock still, as if having trouble taking the image in. He stared first and longest at the hand reaching down to him to help him up. Then he gazed a while down into the eyes that were staring up into John’s in perplexed astonishment… yet also in some kind of peculiar recognition. As if this moment, this unexpectedly immediate connection, had always been meant to happen…

 _Biding my time,_ said a memory in Sh’lok’s voice, pretending to be casual, but full of a quiet, incredulous joy. _Knew you’d turn up._

Lost in wonder, John shivered as they stood there together in that moment, looking down into it as if from a height. John saw now not only what he’d seen then, but also, through _this_ Sh’lok’s eyes, that flash of unconscious recognition in the other’s. _How have I never seen that before?_ John thought. _What does it mean?_

“Let me see,” Sh’lok said softly. “Let me see the rest.”

 _Trust him,_ the back of John’s mind whispered to him, as the eyes of the man on the floor of the cluttered little flat met his again. _Trust me._

John shivered again. _We are one,_ the mind-meld induction mantra said. Now he was beginning to wonder whether he’d ever really followed all the implications of that statement through to their logical conclusions. Once you’d melded two personalities together as intimately as he and his Sh’lok had been doing lately, was it really _possible_ ever to pry them completely apart again?

A hot flush of adrenaline ran up his spine. “Here,” John said, reaching out, and took the hand of the man standing beside him.

The other Sh’lok’s shock was washed away in the next second by fascination, by utter wonder. John laid it all out for him, trying not so much to limit the flow of memories as to curate them… while being astonished moment by moment at the discovery of how many of _Sh’lok’s_ memories his own mind was now harbouring.

There was so much, and from this end of time, when closely examined, every moment of it seemed profoundly significant. Early mornings and long afternoons on the bridge, shifts filled with supernal boredom, downplanet missions challenging or terrifying or just plain uneventful: the feel of the man drifting up to stand behind John’s right shoulder, eyes on the viewscreen or (quietly, secretly) on John. Sliding into view on the front viewscreen, worlds with names that didn’t mean anything… yet: Ekos, Yonada, Deneb II, Coridan, Gamma Hydri IV. Battles with Klingons, skirmishes with Romulans, trouble with tribbles; the ship they served and loved webbed in by Tholians, flung back in time, dragged into unstable space torn by dimensional breaches, eaten by giant space microbes; invasions and kidnappings and diplomatic disputes and attacks by computers with delusions of grandeur…

And through it all, the two of them unfailingly there for their crew and each there for the other, the loyalty deepening and widening, the friendship forging itself solid and strong… until slowly each of them began to realise that it was something far, far more than just that. Weeks and months going by with the intimacy slowly and quietly weaving itself more tightly with every passing day on the Bridge, every afternoon sparring session, every evening spent in quiet, contemplative combat over the chessboards…

Then, Deneva. Then the theft of Sh’lok’s brain. Then Vulcan, and the Place of Marriage and Challenge, and the events that killed one of them and broke both their hearts open. And finally John’s evening visit to the shuttle bay, where he stood alone in the watching starlight and made his choice—to be someone else’s as well as his own—and moments later Sh’lok arrived to look into John’s eyes, and make that choice his own as well.

Then, at last, the dimness of John’s quarters, and the door finally closed behind them. Mouths brushing, arms embracing, all the waiting at last fulfilled, all the uncertainties finished and all the hungers starting to be satisfied, one by one. Touch, heat, mindmeld—the memory of that first meld reflecting into this one as a whole mirror is reflected in one that’s been cracked; the impossible intimacy and the utter acceptance of what had been before, and what could be now. John watched this Sh’lok perceive his counterpart’s response to discovering that he too could be a party, either through John or in himself, to the ecstasies, the broken rules, the desperate chances, the glorious victories… all the things he had previously unable to imagine because the word “love” had never been written in his book.

Even to John, who’d been _in_ these memories and knew what was coming, they were deeply moving. But perceiving them, experiencing them, Sh’lok was trembling at the intensity of what he saw—and felt, and heard and tasted and touched. _Especially_ touched. John wished desperately that he dared reach out a little more conclusively to his partner in the meld. But all around him the air shivered with a sense of everything balancing on a knife’s edge, and he forced himself to be still.

Finally it was the sheer intensity of the experience that drove the other out into the darkness of his inner Erebor again. Once again there Sh’lok stood still as a statue in the fire-touched dimness, doing his Vulcan best to look unmoved and aloof. But John knew better. He could feel Sh’lok yearning toward the danger of friendship, the perils of love: yearning _intolerably_. And if John had had any thoughts about this Sh’lok somehow being less genuine than the other, this reaction more than any other drove them out.

 _It’s him,_ John thought. _No question._ For the man in that other universe would also fling himself recklessly into all manner of danger if he thought the final solution of some mystery, or the revelation of some hidden truth, lay that way. _And then I get to run after him yelling_ Dammit, Sh’lok!

John was shaking too, now, in unavoidable reaction to what this Sh’lok was going through. _All the same, I have to end this. In the real world it’s just minutes left for us, for us all._ Yet this man was Sh’lok too, and John couldn’t leave him without _some_ kind of completion. _He’s… another half of my other half. And I owe him whatever I can do for him in this little bit of time that’s left._

He dropped Sh’lok’s hand.

Sh’lok looked down at his empty hand, then up at John. “Perhaps,” he said… then stopped, as if embarrassed. But after a second he went on anyway, with a kind of grim determination that was nonetheless drenched in pain. “Perhaps it would have been kinder had Lestrade left me to die.”

John was horrified. “Sh’lok, _no—”_

“Having seen what you are—” And John could hear what this Sh’lok would do anything not to be made to say: _…and what no John Watson in this universe can ever be to me._

John swallowed. _“That_ John Watson? No. Probably not. But, Sh’lok, there’ll be other opportunities, other chances for friendship. A lifetime’s worth. If you died now, you’d never have a chance to know them.”

He could feel how hollow and unlikely that suggestion seemed to Sh’lok right now: and John ached for him. But he had to do _something_. It felt as if this Sh’lok was standing somewhere high, ready to throw himself down onto his waiting doom if some better opportunity wasn’t presented to him in a hurry.

 _And this is what I can give him,_ have _to give him. Purpose._

“Anyway, you have things to do now,” John said. “Vital things that don’t leave you the leisure to be dead. The most immediate of them, at the moment, being working out how to deal with another John Watson and another Starfleet… because both will be on your case within minutes. You’ve got things to do once you deal with them, so in the short term you’ve got a duty to keep yourself safe.”

“Why?” Sh’lok said, his expression both bleak and rather perplexed.

John blinked. “Well, first of all, because you’re a good man, and you deserve to survive.”

Sh’lok treated John with a sardonic roll of the eyes that would have done credit to the one John had left behind. “Captain,” he said—

John rolled his eyes right back at him. “We’re all alone down here at the bottom of your mind,” he said, “so it’s probably safe for you to call me ‘John.’”

Sh’lok gave him a dark but thoughtful look. “By my position here,” he said, “you know me to be complicit in the work of an Empire that has spread rapine and genocide across all this part of the galaxy, restricted only by the limitations of warp speed and finite matériel. How can I _possibly_ be a good man?”

“To start with, because you’re doing as little harm as you can inside that system,” John said. “Because, among other things, you haven’t killed me yet. You didn’t just haul off and break Lestrade’s neck, either, when he refused to cooperate with you—because that’s what he did, wasn’t it.” It wasn’t a question. “You have at every turn, in the admittedly very short time I’ve known you, refrained from violence whenever possible.”

Sh’lok opened his mouth, but John didn’t give him a chance to get started. “I also know _another_ of you, intimately. And I don’t believe it possible that you and he are _that_ different. Don’t get me wrong—you’re no more _perfect_ than he is! But each of you has made the best he could of a difficult world. And I believe you’re better than you let on. You’ve assumed a protective colouration of deadliness to survive in this environment. Completely understandable. But I don’t believe your past behaviour needs to limit what you can do and be in the future. Not by a long shot. And now’s your chance to turn recent events to your advantage.”

Sh’lok closed his mouth, tilted his head and gazed at John for a moment… then said: “I am open to suggestions.”

“Good, because the clock’s ticking. You’ve got a Captain coming back in a very few real-time minutes to a ship where a whole lot’s changed in just a few hours… so you’ve got to get ready to protect yourself.” He would have added _And the Halkans!,_ but for the moment held that thought in abeyance.

Sh’lok looked grim. “I also have a Captain returning who will immediately report to the Empire on where he’s been and what he’s seen. In turn the Empire will quickly start research on what happened here. Once they analyse the events completely enough to understand the theory behind them, they will look for ways to exploit the effect; weaponise it.” He looked at John with a flicker of distress. “And their first use of it will almost certainly be to return to your… ‘more benign’ world, your Federation… with the intention to dominate it if possible. And destroy it, if not.”

“I agree.” And John smiled a wicked half-smile. “But if they can’t reproduce the results, they’ll do no such thing.”

“But we have an analysis, you yourself ordered it—”

John laughed out loud. _“Subvert it,_ Sh’lok! The only copies of that analysis that exist are in the _Enterprise’s_ data banks. Anderson’s out of the loop right now as security officer, so you can have your way with the data. And if I know you, you’ll find a way to do it without leaving any traces of what you’ve done.”

John caught the sudden flare of challenge, of mischief, in Sh’lok’s eyes. “Yes,” he murmured.

“Also, I’m betting your John Watson’s going to be _way_ too busy going on a tear around his ship and bullying everybody in sight to look too closely at the computers for at least an hour or two. Probably a lot more. Anyway, how likely is he to do that himself? I’m betting you he’s not very technical.”

“No. But how did you—”

John grinned. “Just a shot in the dark. But a good one.” _Extrapolated backwards from my own bad habits that I don’t dare let myself indulge,_ John thought but didn’t say.

One of Sh’lok’s eyebrows went up.

John snorted. “…Bloody mindmeld,” he muttered. “But he does let his tech folks do all the ‘unimportant’ stuff? Including, particularly, _you?_ Perfect.” He grinned again. “Sh’lok, preserve the valid data somewhere secure and _corrupt what’s left!_ And find a way to do it that won’t get poor Dimmock blamed, because to keep what you’re doing on the quiet, you need his good will. You need to hire him on as a henchman of yours in a hurry. Get on his good side. Bribe him, suborn him, promote him, do whatever you have to to make him your man, and do it fast. Specifically, find a way to protect him from the Captain. Because your Watson sounds like the kind to kill Dimmock for the embarrassment of what’ll have happened to him on _my_ ship.”

Sh’lok’s eyes widened a bit. “What? What do you mean? How can you possibly know what will have happened—”

John’s expression went a bit feral. “Won’t have been pretty, I’m sure. We’ve seen a lot of strange things on this tour, and so we had a plan in place for just this kind of event.”

“ _This_ kind of event?”

“My Sh’lok,” John said, “is as good at projecting circumstances into the future as he is at deducing the past. But yeah. These days when a crew member comes back from a planetside mission and isn’t, well, quite right…they get assessed and confined in a hurry, pending further investigation. We’ve been burned a few times that way. Lost some crewmen.” John scowled at the memories. “Never again.”

“So my captain must be…”

“Fucking _furious_ at being grabbed and chucked into the brig by security and then ever-so-coolly deduced, not to mention psychoanalysed, by someone who looks a lot like his First Officer?” Because, Lestrade not being present except in his other-universe form, of course that duty would fall to Sh’lok. John grinned at the thought of sitting down to review the security video… assuming they all survived beaming back. “ _Count_ on it! So you can take advantage of his homecoming tantrum to mess up the official version of the data and stash the genuine article away safe for your own later analysis. Oh, and don’t forget to destroy the analyses we did under voicelock—the lock won’t prevent you from just deleting them. Might be smart to make it look like we did that ourselves to keep the results from being reproduced. We’ll be your scapegoats.” John grinned.

Sh’lok blinked. Then his gaze narrowed again. “You said that there was something I must do that would leave me ‘no leisure for being dead.’”

“Something no one but you can do,” John said. “That no one here but you can be trusted to do.” And here came the 89th-minute kick, the play that John desperately hoped he was right to try to pull off—because if he was somehow wrong about this, he was sure there were no more dangerous hands in this world than the ones in which he was about to place this trust. “Sh’lok, the accident that brought us here—this is one of the most _remarkable_ events any scientist could ever hope to witness. And here _you_ are, one of the foremost scientific minds on this side of the Galaxy if _my_ Sh’lok is anything to go by. And here’s this priceless data, contained inside this _Enterprise_ and extant nowhere else. You _must_ protect this ship, Sh’lok, keep it safe and running—even in this dysfunctional context—so that you’ll be able to keep this unique knowledge secure while you come to fully understand it. By doing this you’ll keep the secret of the technique safe from those who’d try to find ways to exploit it for personal gain or Imperial advancement… and probably wind up destroying not just themselves, but everything else.”

“Everything else…!” Sh’lok murmured.

 _“You_ were the one who said they’d try to weaponise it,” John said. “My money says your deduction’s sound. Think of the accidents that happen when greedy, overeager people try to weaponise things, and also to get one up on each other. You’re talking about a theoretical technology that could blow up a _whole_ lot more than a couple of planets. If people start faffing around with it without understanding it, they could, I don’t know, rip space wide open or something! Whole universes could wind up merging catastrophically. There could be a disaster beyond _anything_ anyone’s ever imagined. The fabric of existence itself, of matter and energy, could wind up being deranged. This knowledge, this kind of technology, has got to be controlled, kept safe from people who’d use it irresponsibly.” A horrible concept manifested itself before John and he couldn’t help but share it, considering the company. “God, Sh’lok, science _itself_ could wind up being destroyed. _By idiots.”_

The look on Sh’lok’s face—escaped from his control for the barest moment and then swiftly sealed over again—was that of a man who’d just been told not only that the world might end on his watch, but that if it did, the loss of the best parts of it might be his personal responsibility.

John’s first reaction was to feel guilty for inflicting this on him. Yet the thought of a galaxy, maybe a _universe_ laid waste by the events that could flow from this one accident was making the hair stand up all over him. “If you can keep this ship in one piece and at the same time find a way to keep the Empire off your back—you’ll eventually suss this out from top to bottom. No man alive’s better equipped than you are to analyse this data, to discover ways to keep it from being used dangerously, ways it could be used safely. And given enough time, I bet you could even figure out a way not to need some ridiculous coincidence, some accident of everyone being in the right place at the right time with an ion storm on top, to compromise space and open the portal between universes for you. You’ll find a way to do it cleanly. Elegantly. _Unilaterally.”_

Sh’lok’s expression suggested he found the whole proposition most unlikely. “Nobody could be that clever.”

 _“You_ could,” John said.

Sh’lok regarded John with utter astonishment.

“For _Science,_ Sh’lok,” John said very softly. “Think of what opening this gateway properly could mean. The adventure, the danger, the _possibilities._ Even interstellar exploration would be _nothing_ compared to it. Imagine the knowledge, the science of thousands, _millions_ of universes, laid open to be explored and classified and shared—”

“Not merely millions,” Sh’lok said. “Or billions.” His tone was a bit pedantic at the moment, but his eyes were already getting a far-off look that John had seen many times before, touched with the glint of challenge. “But a number at least closely approaching infinity—”

“Or equaling it,” John said. “Numberless lives across numberless universes that could be made better by learning one another, learning _from_ one another—”

The sudden irrational image came to him of a starship full of Sh’loks, gathered from hundreds of universes, all endlessly experimenting, endlessly trying to top one another’s results, and endlessly deducing one another (and getting cranky about it when they got something wrong, because there was always _something…_ ).

He started to laugh, and Sh’lok looked at him oddly. John just shook his head, waved a hand helplessly. “Sorry, I just had this picture of all these Sh’loks—”

“I saw,” Sh’lok said.

And suddenly he looked stunned—a most alarming expression. “Sh’lok, _what,”_ John said, “what’s the matter—?”

Sh’lok swallowed hard. But in his widened eyes, John saw a hot bright flare of realisation, like conducted light falling where it was most needed. “If there can be other Sh’loks, _many_ other Sh’loks…” He stared at John in amazement. “Then there can be more than just one other John Watson. Many, _many_ John Watsons. And with there being so very many, excellent odds that, that—”

He broke off as if afraid to say it. But what he was thinking hit John so hard that he actually reached out to this Sh’lok and took him by the shoulders and gripped him, shaking him a little in absolute triumph. “That, oh my God Sh’lok, that one of them’s a John Watson like me, maybe even a Captain of an _Enterprise,_ but _he’s got no Sh’lok._ And he’s waiting for him, maybe even _looking_ for him—!”

Just for that moment, doubt intruded itself into Sh’lok’s eyes. “It is… an intriguing concept. But is it— I do not know if— “ He trailed off. Then he said, almost reluctantly, “Until now, alone has always protected me…”

“Take this dare and you won’t bloody _need_ its protection any more,” John said. “You’ll have something a billion times better.”And he shook Sh’lok one last time. “So _go find him!”_ He dropped his hands. _“_ But to do that you’ve got to keep this data safe from the Empire. And to do _that,_ you’ll have to be Captain of this _Enterprise,_ at least for a while. No matter how much you don’t want it. You’ll need to save the Halkans, too—”

Sh’lok threw a sharp look at him. “What? I fail to see—”

“Oh, Sh’lok, do keep up!” Both the Vulcan’s eyebrows went up at that, in slightly scandalised surprise but also a little amusement. “Without your _Enterprise_ coming here at the same time as ours, without the Halkans’ ‘intransigence’ that kept you in this neighbourhood this long, this accident would never have happened! You _owe_ them. So save their world! And then start changing yours enough for the better so you can deal with that data and go hunting. You’re the smartest man in any room, and _you can do this.”_

“And my own Captain Watson—”

John shook his head, grinning. “You may have let him run things up till now, but he’s no match for you,” he said. “You know it. Wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the crew knows it too. Time _he_ found out, wouldn’t you say?”

And then a huge shiver went through John: his own outside-time sense warning him, _Time’s up._ He lifted his hand, parted. “Sh’lok, live long,” John said. “Prosper. _And promise me you’ll go find him.”_

Sh’lok lifted his hand. “Live long and prosper…”

The meld came apart around them. And as it did, a whisper, an echo:

“…John.”

***

A moment later John was back in Sickbay, his hands dropping from Sh’lok’s face. That face had gone impassive again, impossible to read. John let out a breath, turned away.

“Wait," Sh'lok said. "I will escort you.”

John nodded. They headed for the Sickbay door together. Just before it opened, John unhitched the phaser he’d come back for, checked its settings, aimed it at Anderson—still slumped against the wall—and gave him a few seconds’ worth of its highest setting of stun.

Sh’lok glanced at John in surprise. John put up the phaser again, shrugged. “No harm in this nasty piece of work being off everybody’s case for a few more hours,” he said, with a meaningful glance at Sh’lok. “Let’s move.”

“Four minutes and eighteen seconds…” Sh’lok said as they went out the door together.

They made their way down the corridors together swiftly and in silence. Whatever crewmen they came across just pressed themselves up against the walls and saluted. _Unnerved by seeing their Captain and First Officer going somewhere together without their bodyguards?_ John thought. It was possible, and somehow he wasn’t surprised that people around here might see that as a sign of big trouble coming. _Oh God, to get_ out _of this, out of_ here _, and we_ will _get out of it, just a few minutes more—!_

And there was the door to the Transporter room. It hissed open before John and Sh’lok—

There stood Mrs. Hudson, and Donovan, and Lestrade… all of them standing between the Transporter console and the pads, holding still as statues before the phaser that was being held on them. As John came in, that phaser swung toward him enough to cover him and Sh’lok too. He stopped right where he was as the door shut behind him, his gaze locking together with the cool, dangerous one of the small blonde woman holding the phaser.

“Take me with you,” said Mary Morstan.


End file.
